China

This morning we were up early in preparation for a day of exploring in Beijing. We got downstairs by about 7:45 am for a lovely breakfast.

At 8:30 am, we met our guide, Colin, and headed off with our driver for our first stop, The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City is the world’s largest palace complex, covering about 72 hectares (178 acres) in central Beijing. It was constructed from 1406 to 1420 by the Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty, serving as China’s political and ceremonial center for over 500 years until the early 20th century. From its official occupation in 1420 until the end of imperial rule in 1912, the Forbidden City housed 24 emperors from the Ming and Qing dynasties. Its name comes from its strict exclusivity: entering the palace grounds was forbidden to all except the imperial family and select officials, under penalty of death.

With around 9,000 rooms spread across about 1,000 buildings, we were never going to see everything in the palace grounds. But our guide, Colin, did a great job of pointing out a lot of the highlights as we moved around the enormous grounds.

We left the Forbidden City around midday and headed for our next stop, a traditional tea ceremony. We learned about the importance of tea in Chinese culture while sampling some amazing teas.

After stocking up on a big selection of teas, we hopped back into the car for the drive to our next destination, the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven is an iconic imperial complex built in the early 15th century for ceremonial offerings to heaven by Chinese emperors. It is recognised as one of the greatest achievements of traditional Chinese architecture and after seeing it and learning about its construction, we understood why. It is quite incredible.

We had a nice walk through the gardens to get back to the car. The Temple of Heaven sits in a 270-hectare public park that contains about 60,000 trees, some of which are over 500 years old and date back to the Ming Dynasty.

Our final destination for the day was the Summer Palace. It took nearly two hours in the Beijing traffic to get there, and we had to will ourselves to get out of the nice warm car to once again brave the Beijing cold. It was particularly windy today, with the winds sweeping down from Sibera, dropping the temperature well below zero!

The Summer Palace was originally built in 1750 under Emperor Qianlong, serving as a summer retreat and leisure ground for the imperial family. The Summer Palace covers an area of about 2.9 square kilometers (290 hectares), making it one of the largest gardens in China. In the centre of the gardens is the huge Kunming Lake, modelled after Hangzhou’s famous West Lake and occupying about three-quarters of the site’s total area. The granite, rocks, timber, bricks, tiles, and other materials used to construct the gardens were sourced from all over China, arriving via China’s road system and Grand Canal, managed by a workforce of thousands to complete the project.

Many people were gathered on the edge of the Kunming Lake, waiting to take a sunset photo. We contemplated this too, but we gave in to the cold and headed back to the car.

We arrived back at the hotel at about 6:00 pm and headed upstairs to our room. On the way up, we succumbed to the fresh crêpes on offer in The Peninsula lobby.

After a big day out, we opted for a lovely dinner in our room.

Tomorrow we will be up very early to head to The Great Wall, which we are very much looking forward to.