I spent a couple days touring the Lama Temple and the Summer Palace with some out-of-towners, as Henry worked his 8 - 6 shift. Both of these sites are must sees for a trip to Beijing.
Lama Temple (Yonghegong)
Once home to a Prince turned Emperor, Yongzheng, this lamasery for Tibetan Monks and tourist land mark, houses one of the most impressive sculptures I've ever seen. Standing approximately 60 feet high, this Maitreya statue was created from a piece of solid sandalwood gifted by the Dalai Lama to Emperor Qianlong in 1750. The trip from Nepal to Beijing took three years and the building it lives in was constructed around the finished sculpture.
The Summer Palace
The old summer imperial home is located just NW of the city. According to TravelChinauide.com, after an attack by the Anglo-French allied force, the current Summer Palace was built up from the ruins of the 'Qingyi Garden' (Garden of Clear Ripples) in 1888 by Empress Dowager Cixi via some questionable means. At this time she changed the name of this over 700 acre project to Summer Palace (Yiheyuan). It was designated as a Key Cultural Relics Protection Site of China in 1960 and a UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1998.
Find more photos on Flickr.
Qingdao or Bust! (or more popularly known as Tsingtao)
This weekend is a long weekend with the Dragon Boat Festival making Monday a National Holiday, so Henry & I are going away to the coast. To the home of Qingdao beer, a legacy of the German occupation there. We are excited about getting to the ocean, as the rest of the summer looks like it will be consumed by pre, post, and Olympic events for the news and I will be moving to Caochangdi to start my residence mid July.
Time will fly, then I will be back on the East Coast again. The future is still uncertain, but the summer promises to be full of opportunities.
Highlights of the weekend away:
Food
An Shi Stove in Hong Kong Garden area of town. It is a hip little Korean place with a a very east village feel. About 30% of businesses based in Qingdao are Korean owned therefore, there is a substantial Korean population living and working here. We noticed on our drive in from the airport that many signs were in Chinese & Korean, so were tipped off immediately.
Sights
We went to Zhongshan Park with the Zhongshan Temple (where I spotted someone's briefs being hung to dry just outside one of the buildings, refer to flickr!), the Arboretum, and the Zoo. Skipping the TV tower, as the fog laid low, and missed actually entering the zoo, as it shut at 5. We rode the lift (like a skilift, sans snow and skis) from Temple side to Zoo side and realized we have acquired an adult case of "fear-of-heights," making the whole experience much more of an adrenaline rush than an easy way to cover the vast landscape.
We also went to the Aquarium called Qingdao Underwater World, not to mistaken for the Qingdao Polar Ocean World. The Qingdao Underwater World is rated as AAAA tourist resort and is called a "modern large-scale eco-tourism project integrating marine tourism and science education." The reality of what I saw:
1/3 of the exhibits were colorless specimens in formaldehyde or dried/varnished ones
1/3 actual live fish/water mammals, some in very tight spaces, some in a larger tanks
1/3 shops with all of the above in some edible form or decorative form
It is hard to see how some animals are treated in all cultures, but here I felt spectacle was primary and education only a small room toward the exit that was easy to miss with the vast displays in all the retail shops. Contemporary China is full of contradictions. The things kept from the past like traditions of harvesting (and by that I mean killing) animals for parts used in food or "medicine," while all the benefit of the intellectuals of the past have been banished. It's a culture that has traditions without history. Even the origins of Communism and Socialism which were intellectual imports, have been so derived that it is hard to recognize the social benefits in China today.
Redstar
is an English language website that tells you all about Qingdao and the places to go, see, & eat!
It was a great find, as the lonely planet's section on the city is brief, but at least lead us to this.
