Summer Palace. Today. Another tourist attraction. Another relatively small area of space crammed with photograph seeking tourists. Almost more white people than Chinese.
It was kind of a disappointment. Overcast and polluted, the vista was not extraordinary. Most of it wasn't even open for visitors.
We (Hagen -- my current couch surfer) and I took a bus from my apartment all the way there. It was an hour and a half journey to the other side of the city, which, in my mind, was remarkably fast. We met Case there.
We didn't end up entering until about 3 pm. Given that it closes at 6, we were short on time because, like everything else in this country, it is huge.
The Summer Palace, for those out of the know, was the summer resort for some emperors, their concubines, the empress dowager, and the eunuchs. They weren't allowed to leave the Forbidden City (weird, huh? those who could go in couldn't go out. Meanwhile the rest of the country wanted in). So they built a summer area in the same city to look like other beautiful places in China. Like Kunming and Suzhou. So it's basically mini-cities so the imperial court could visit them even though they couldn't actually visit them.
Ridiculous, but fascinating. I'm sure it was much more interesting with the court wandering around in human-powered rickshaws. But Chinese and Western tourists were...you know...annoying.
