Chengde Summer Resort
Chengde Summer Resort is in the northern part of Chengde City, Hebei Province. Chengde Imperial Palace, also known as the Rehe Palace, is within the resort. The palace, covering an area of 5.64 million square meters and including 110 buildings with a combined floor space of 100,000 square meters, was where Qing emperors spent their summer days. Work on the palace began in 1703 and was completed in 1792. With a 10-kilometer-long zigzag palace wall, the resort is the largest intact imperial garden and palace in China. It was included in the UNESCO world heritage list in 1994.
The Summer Resort has a simple and elegant layout. It was built by the natural mountains and rivers and copying the landscape from southern Jiangsu Province and outside of the Shanhaiguan. The palaces in this large-scale imperial garden were built in a style of quadruple courtyards, with blue bricks and tiles.
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 Front Palace(1), the Pine Crane Temple(2), the Pine-Soughing Valleys(3) and the East Palace(4). 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 Summer Resort is a monumental temple complex composed of eight outer temples which were built from 1713to 1789. The temples are Furen Temple(5), Pule Temple(6), Anyuan Tempel(7), Puning Temple(8), Xumi Fushou Temple(9), Putuo Zongcheng Temple(10) and Shuxiang Temple(11). 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 armsand 1,000 eyes. The statue weighs 110 tonsandis
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.
Notes:
1.Front Palace 正宫
2.the Pine Crane Temple 松鹤斋
3.the Pine-Soughing Valleys 万壑松风
4.the East Palace 东宫
5.Furen Temple 溥仁寺
6.Pule Temple 普乐寺
7.Anyuan Tempel 安远寺
8.Puning Temple 普宁寺
9.Xumi Fushou Temple须弥福寿之庙
10. Putuo Zongcheng Temple 普陀宗乘之庙
11. Shuxiang Temple 殊像寺
