Summer Palace

The trip to the Summer Palace on Thursday was our first real outing from campus, and we treated ourselves to a taxi ride there, which cost 12 Yuan (about $1.75) - not extravagant. Last time I was at the Summer Palace was in 1998, on the Bear Treks trip with Caron, and we rushed through it, barely getting an impression of the the enormous park-like area that bounds the three lakes. This time, David and I took about 3 hours to stroll around, saw some performers on the great outdoor stage that was host to magnificent Peking Opera performances in the time of the empress dowager, walked the length of the great Long Corridor with its 14,000 paintings, had an outrageously overpriced and awful microwaved lunch (when Chinese food in China is bad, it's really, really horrid), climbed the steep steps to the Tower of Buddhist Incense with its 16th-century multi-armed Buddha statue (to which we donated money to incur benevolence for our enterprise), saw many locations the poetic names of which were matched by their serene beauty (the Hall of Virtue and Longevity, the Cloud-Dispelling Tower, the Tower of Listening to the Orioles, etc.), and returned to campus in late afternoon. I've posted some pictures here, both from outside campus and the Summer Palace. (Click pictures to enlarge!)