Oct 27 Mon Trip to Chengde

The custom here is to reward people with a trip. Our trip is to Chengde which was a Summer Palace in the mountains for the Qings. They were Manchus and it reminded them of their homeland. It is about 3 hours Northeast of Beijing. Xianglei was our accompanying person. He had never been there before, so it was a good opportunity for him.

Xianglei arrived with the car and driver at 7 am, and off we went. The driver is an important part of these trips, because he has been there before and knows the ropes. When we got there we were met by a prearranged guide. She explained stuff to Xianglei, and then he translated for us. When we discovered that the signs did a good job we headed for them and read the stuff for ourselves. This made it much easier on everyone.

The palace is divided into 3 sections. 1. The actual palace part:

2. The Mountains. This was a shuttle ride. We took off like a bat out of hell and went screaming up a mountain. At the top, we all unloaded and climbed up to the highest point in the park. The rest of our group were friggin' mountain goats. We had a hard time keeping up. They also seemed to know where they were supposed to go. There were several stops. One included a musical interlude, by people in the costumes of the Qings. (Notice the shoes with the high posts - this made the feet seem to be as small as the bound feet. The Qings didn't do that.)

3. The Lakes. This was a calmer ride. We were the only ones in the shuttle. It did still involve some climbing on some very rough rocky trails. The rocks were supposed to be steps, but were very uneven.

We were able to get really close to a mother deer and her baby. I was surprise at how close she let us come.

After this we went to lunch. The driver knew just the place and I think he helped order, too. In China it is the norm to have the driver have lunch with you.

We had cabbage cooked in milk
Lamb with cilantro and cumin
Venison with peppers
And a soup.

After lunch we went to yet another temple.

The really interesting thing at this one was that the monks were chanting while beating drums, clanging cymbals and blowing horns (two types.) (If I had to be in this room with all of the noise, I would have a splitting headache in about 2 minutes.)





We all agreed that we could skip the two other temples in Chengde, which would be more of the same. We wanted to get back to Beijing (and the good roads) before it got fully dark. We did make it. We got back home at 7:10.

Since we had had a large lunch and it was getting late we decided to go to the 24 hour place across the street for just a small dinner:

Yup. That's what we had.