Mountain playground for emperors
Print Edition
IMPERIAL summer villas and its surrounding temples have made the Chengde Mountain Resort — Eight Outlying Temples National Park a famous historical and cultural site in north China’s Hebei Province. Just 200 kilometers from Beijing, it is easily accessible by either train or long-distance bus.
Taking up a total area of 2,394 square kilometers, the mountain resort and the eight Buddhist temples at its periphery were built during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), the last feudal Chinese dynasty. It was a place for the emperor to have fun, handle state affairs and for the Manchu and Mongolian nobles to escape the summer heat and infectious diseases such as smallpox. In 1994, UNESCO approved the Mountain Resort and its Eight Outlying Temples as a World Cultural Heritage site.
Chengde Mountain Resort
The construction of the Chengde Mountain Resort began in 1703 under the reign of Emperor Kangxi, and was completed in 1790 during the reign of Emperor Qianlong. About 90 percent of the area is composed of lakes, hills, mini-forests and grasslands. Visitors to the resort can enjoy scenery of both north and south China, with landscaping borrowed from the southern gardens of Suzhou, Hangzhou and Jiaxing and the Mongolian grasslands.
With an area double that of the Summer Palace, as well as a summer bolthole, Chengde Mountain Resort, was a hunting ground for emperors of the Qing Dynasty for centuries.
Today, it is still known as the world’s largest imperial garden. Rehe, the shortest river in the world, only 14.7 kilometers long, runs through the resort.
Eight outlying temples
To the north of the mountain resort, there is a magnificent Buddhist temple complex. These temples scattered around the Chengde Mountain Resort were also built in the 18th century under the emperors Kangxi and Qianlong.
The temples were built for the Han, Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan and other ethnic groups. They are the symbols of national unity and prosperity.
In the Puning Temple, or Temple of Universal Peace, stands the world’s biggest wooden statue of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, or Guan Yin, the goddess of mercy.
It is about 22 meters in height and weighs 110 tons, with 42 arms and three eyes symbolizing her ability to see the present, the past and the future.
There is also a Lesser Potala Palace, modeled after the Potala Palace in Tibet. It was built by Emperor Qianlong to receive the visiting Tibetan nobles.
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