The Long Corridor lays stories along the beams in painted scenes — shade in summer, a skeleton in winter. Kunming Lake is fine by boat and better on foot along the West Causeway, watching the Seventeen-Arch Bridge throw its shadow on the water. In autumn smoke trees turn Longevity Hill a thin copper.
The Qingyi Garden was destroyed in 1860 and rebuilt as the Summer Palace. The ruin still sits in the leftover stone. Suzhou Street on the back lake is a market street; when the crowds thin you can hear your own footsteps.
Read it as the counterpart to the Forbidden City: one is court ritual, the other is living in a garden. A Beijing trip that is only palaces is missing half its breath.
What to do
- Go to the ruins of the Old Summer Palace as well as the Summer Palace. They are different places and the ruins are the more affecting.
- Shenyang's Mukden Palace is the Forbidden City's smaller, earlier, distinctly Manchu cousin.
