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May 14, 2008
The Summer Palace and Temple of Incense
Our first real sightseeing trip was this morning to go see the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is where the Empress lived and is where the Last Emperor was held captive by his mother in the early 1900's. Even on three hours of sleep, I was wide awake and ready to go.
The Summer Palace is an absolutely beautiful place. The architecture is what you vision for Ancient China and it is full of amazing statues, buildings, walkways, ponds, and attractions. It is extremely large and has a few pretty large hills on it. You can see most of Beijing from up top.
There was a path/hill that goes up to the Temple of Incense, a giant Buddhist Temple that houses a 400 year old statue of some crazy Buddhist icon that looks like Medusa. It was a real steep, long hike up rocks, stairs, a windy path, and through some tunnels. Really cool and a lot of kids turned back because they were scared or were too lazy to climb. It felt really good to get up there and was definitely worth it. I took a decent amount of pictures, but will wait to share them until after I get home. The picture here is of the Temple of Incense.
Posted by brianhe at May 14, 2008 10:05 AM