Mountain Resort of Chengde (Bishu Shanzhuang)
Mountain Resort of Chengde (Bishu Shanzhuang), Chengde Imperial Palace, located in Chengde City, Hebei Province, is one of the largest and best-preserved imperial palaces as a summer resort and hunting ground for emperors of the Qing Dynasty outside Beijing.
Qing emperors Kang Xi, Qian Long, and Jia Qing often spent several months a year here to escape the summer heat in the capital city of Beijing and the palace zone in the southern part of the resort was therefore designed to resemble the Forbidden City in Beijing. It consists of two parts: a court in front, where the emperor received high officials, nobles of various minority nationalities, and foreign envoys; and bed chambers in the rear, which were the imperial family’s living quarters.
Many of the scenic spots around the resort’s lake area were copied from famous landscaped gardens I south China. For instance, the main building on Green Lotus Island, “Tower of Mist and Rain,” (Yanyulou) is a copy of a tower in Nanhu Lake at Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province. The resort’s plain area possesses characteristics of the scenery of the Mongolian grasslands. Forested mountains and valleys are dotted with various building.
It is a vast complex of palaces and administrative and ceremonial buildings. There are two parts to the summer resort – the palace itself and a scenic area. The palace was where the emperor lived, handled state affairs and held celebrations or ceremonies. It is made up of the Main Palace, the Crane Temple, Wanhe Songfeng and the East Palace.
The scenic area includes a Lake District, a District of Plains and a Mountainous District. The Lake District reflects the landscape of the fish-and-rice villages in southern Jiangsu Province. The Rehe Springs are located in the northeast corner. The western part of the Plain District illustrates a grassland scene from Inner Mongolia while in the eastern part there are ancient trees like the forests of Greater Xingan Mountain. The densely forested mountainous area is on an undulating landscape.
To the northeast of the Mountain Resort is a monumental temple complex composed of eight outer temples. They are Furen Temple, Fushang Temple (which has been damaged), Pule Temple, Anyuan Temple, Tuning Temple, Xumi Fushou Temple, Putuo Zongcheng Temple and Shuxiang Temple. They were built in Han palace style and drew on the architectural styles of ethnic groups such as Mongolian, Tibetan and Ugyur.
The Pule, Puning and Xumi Fushou temples are the main structures of the complex. The Hall of Brightness in the Pule Temple which has a double-eave and doom roof is similar to the Hall of Prayer for Bountiful Harvests at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. In the Hall of the Bodhisattva of the Puning Temple there is a 22.23-meter-high Bodhisattva which has 1,000 arms and 1,000 eyes. The statue weighs 110 tons and is the highest and largest wood statue in the world. Putuo Zongcheng Temple was modeled on the Potala Palace in Lhasa and is famous as Lesser Potala.
The Temple of the Potarak Doctrine (Putuozongshengmiao), occupying an area of 220,000 square meters, is by far the largest of all temples in the area. With rows of buildings rising at different levels from the south upwards, the temple is a copy of the Dalai Lama’s Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet.
Tickets:
CNY 90 (Peak Season)
CNY 60 (Low Season)
Opening Hours: 08:10 to 17:30
Bus Route: 5,6,10,11,15
