the Summer Palace Beijing
In order to avoid the intense heat of the summer, the imperial court used to leave the Forbidden City and stay in a specially built resort about 11 kilometers (seven miles) north-west of Beijing. Known in the west as the Summer Palace and in China as Yiheyuan-the garden for cultivating harmony-the resort encompasses Longevity Hill (Wanshoushan) and a series of palaces, pavilions, terraces and covered walks strung out along the northern shore of Kunming Lake.
Indeed the Summer Palace is three-quarters covered by water and Kunming Lake, whose shape and size have been altered many times by successive landscape architects, is central to the overall design of the park. The indefatigable Emperor Qianlong, for one, reconstructed it to resemble the West Lake in Hangzhou in 1751, the year of his mother’s 60th birthday (Longevity Hill was named for her).
