Flickr Picks – Beijing – Summer Palace
August 1st, 2008 by Stephen Cronin [Shortlink]Flickr Picks: My favourite China related finds from Flickr, the photo sharing website. Click on the image to visit the photo's home page on Flickr.
braimondi posted a photo:
This photo has had it’s license changed and has been removed from Flickr.
The Summer Palace (Yihe Yuan) is a must visit tourist destination in Beijing. It’s huge (290 hectares or 716 acres) and this photo is only showing the walk around Kunming Lake. There’s a lot more to it.
My favourite part is the Marble Boat (Shi Fang). Here is a photo of it by flibblesan:
This photo has been removed from Flickr.
You may recognise it from various movies. There’s a story behind it. The Empress Dowager was supposed to put the money towards rebuilding the Chinese navy, but spent it on this instead. She had many critics, although I remember reading that one Chinese academic said that any fleet China put together back then would have been easily destroyed, but the Marble Boat is still there, so it must have been a good decision!
There’s a lot more to see and it’s all very worthwhile. Along with the Great Wall and the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace is part of the top 3 tourist destinations in Beijing.
As you can see there are a lot of tourists in this photo. Any popular tourist destination in China is certainly going to be packed with people, which is a pity really. It’d be great if you could get the Summer Palace to yourself!
I’m sure we’ll see many more photos of the Summer Palace here on Flickr Picks, as most visitors to Beijing go there.
Disclaimer: This photo was not taken by me. It was shared by a third-party on Flickr, under a Creative Commons license. For details on the license, see the photo's home page on the Flickr website.
