China Beijing: Summer Palace, Dumpling Dinner

We arrived around 8:30 am at our Beijing hotel and were able to check in immediately, which was so nice! After unpacking and settling in, we headed out to the Summer Palace.

Wendy, Louise and Me at the east gate of the Summer Palace. A pair of lions guard important buildings in China. The guardian lion behind us has his paw on a globe, representing the emperor's power. There is a female lion on the left of the building that has her paw on a baby lion, representing the emperor's fertility.

I love all the lamps.

Beautiful designs in the walkways.

Peering through a window out onto the lake. There is also a painting on the window.

There were a lot of these windows in the corridor, each with a different design painted on them.

Kunming Lake with Seventeen Arch Bridge in the background.

Emily wheeling Wendy around the grounds. We all took turns pushing.

Louise, Me and Emily on a beautiful bridge.

Francy found a cultural relic to hang out in for a bit. Perhaps it reminds her of home.

Me and Louise hiking up Longevity Hill. We enjoyed exploring the area. There were quite a few buildings at the top of the hill as well as on the backside.

Many Buddhas on the outside of the Temple of the Sea of Wisdom. Inside was a large Buddha.

That's a hardy tree growing between those rocks!

View of some of the structures on the backside of the hill with Beijing in the distance. It was pretty hazy the day we visited.

Beautiful design under the eaves.

Looking up

Cool features on the roof. We learned later that this building wasn't very important because there weren't very many decorations.

Dragon rain spout

Me and Louise

Couple panoramic shots of the area.

Such a beautiful building.

Top of the Tower of Buddhist Incense. Emily and I later climbed back up to it.

We walked down much of the Long Corridor, which is 700 meters long and contains roughly 10,000 paintings depicting Chinese history, literature, mythology and geography. We enjoyed making up stories to go with some of the paintings. A few of the paintings are below.

Sometimes the Long Corridor was crowded! Here I am navigating with Wendy in her wheelchair.

We went on a boat ride on Kunming Lake. This is a classic view of the Summer Palace with the Tower of Buddhist Incense being the structure at the top. The Temple of the Sea of Wisdom is just behind it.

Some support buildings to the left of the main structures.

Me and Wendy

Emily and Louise

Beautiful arch bridge with a tall pagoda in the background.

Wendy, Louise, Me and Emily heading into the Cloud Dispensing Hall where we saw many birthday gifts given to the Empress Dowager Cixi, including the vases shown below.

Cool tree bark.

Behind the hall were stairs. Emily and I climbed them, telling the others we would let them know how many stairs there were (222, in case you are wondering). We didn't realize that it led up to the Temple of Buddhist Incense. We were glad we climbed so we could get a peak inside. We also saw other buildings to the side of the main buildings.

Buildings to the side of the main structure.

Information on the Tower of Buddhist Incense.

The Tower of Buddhist Incense. Pretty impressive!

There was a "short" corridor that contained paintings similar to those in the Long Corridor.

Information on the Buddha statue inside the Temple.

Pretty impressive looking!

View of Kunming Lake from up top.

Emily and Me with man who wanted a picture with us. His wife was the one who took it.
I actually got asked on multiple occasions to have my picture taken with people. It was a bit strange and my friends joked with me about it. I know it happened a lot in India but that was mostly because of the kids whereas here it was just because of me.

View down at the buildings from the top of Longevity Hill.

Emily and Me, almost down.
(This shows one set of stairs; there was another set we had to climb as well to get to the top.)

Marble boat.

Me with the marble boat.

Beautiful greenery above the lake.

Wendy, Me and Louise on a beautiful bridge. This part of the Summer Palace was pretty quiet.

Lovely!

Emily, Louise and Me headed out to dinner at a Taiwanese dumpling restaurant. To get there, we braved the subway at rush hour. It was very crowded! The good news is that we all made it on the subway together, although it was a bit scary as Emily almost got stuck in the door (and no, they don't have safety features on Chinese subways!).

Love the subway cards!

Man playing in subway station.

The dumplings were delicious! Here's photos of a couple we tried:

After dinner, Emily and I headed out to try to find a market Wendy found online. However, it turned out to be a night market which is not at all like a supermarket. We were not successful in finding rice (although we asked at a lot of stores and got a good laugh when Emily asked "Do you have rice?" into one man's translation app and it somehow heard "Do you have breath?"). However, we did see this man eating a scorpion.