
China – Flower Blossoms & Peony
Festival Tour
April 8th to April 22nd, 2008
In the afternoon we paid a visit to the
Summer Palace, the grand garden park of the Empress Dowager, Cixi. The
Summer Palace is the largest imperial garden in the world. It contains
classical Chinese garden architecture. The initial construction of the
Summer Palace started in the year 1750, commissioned by Emperor Qianlong as
a gift for his mother's birthday. The construction took fifteen years to
complete. It had the name "Qingyi Yuan" (Garden of Clear Ripples) at that
time. Plundering by foreign troops in the year 1860 destroyed most of the
buildings, but they were renovated in 1888 by Empress Dowager Cixi, who was
said to have embezzled funds of the Imperial Navy to build the garden. After
the year 1949, the garden became a park and got the name Yiheyuan (Summer
Palace).
http://www.sino-cs.ac.uk/html/Heritage/h_yhy.htm
Then we visited Beijing Botanical Garden…it was a wonderful place to walk
around, here I found some ladies getting photographs taken for something and
could not resist taking their pictures. Love the costumes.
This evening, we enjoyed a Peking Duck dinner.
April 11: Full day tour to visit the Great Wall at Badaling, the most well
preserved section of the wall and the only man-made structure that you can
view from the moon. Built in the 7th century BC and built to keep out the
warring invaders from the north, but additional sections were extended
eastward for nearly 6,700 kilometers until the 16th century AD.
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/scene/beijing/badaling.htm
We also visited a ceramic factory…
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