Imperial Summer Palace of Mountain Resort, Chengde

We booked a private English Speaking driver through TripAdvisor. It worked beautiful and our driver was great. Chengde is a small city by Chinese standards about 3.5 million people. Chengde is in the Hebei province about 250 KM northeast of Beijing and was established during the Qing-dynasty as an imperial summer residence. The city’s core remains the 18th-century Mountain Resort palace complex. To give you a perspective. We visited on a Friday…leaving Beijing at 5 a.m. and arrived in less than 2.5 hours. However, our drive back to the city on Friday afternoon took us over 5 hours. It was long, tiring and filled with accidents. We also traveled during the National Holiday in October so there were more people out and about than normal. The Summer Mountain Resort was built on a lake and had at least 36 different points of interested. At each point there was a different description such as: 1) This is where one would be entertained by music 2) this is where one would relax in the morning sun and warm oneself or 3) this is a place where one would be entertained by jesters. It was kind of funny to me that they took the time to point this out. They had buildings at all these sights, many of which were closed. As we walked the property, My husband stated the obvious, you know why the emperor chose this location. It was simply gorgeous and relaxing, even with the holiday crowds. Everywhere you looked there was something new to look at and something interesting to see. The space was beautiful and we are from the State of Washington in the US. You entered the main campus through what felt like a village and a museum like area with artifacts. We did not spend a lot of time here because it was incredibly crowded. Then you walked down a hill and the beauty opened up to you. We headed to the island in the middle of the lake first and worked our way over to the palace. We chose to stay to the right and walk along the stone pathway. The path we took was long and along the waters edge. The inlet was built in the early 1700's. Their was a boat out in the water that day that had a lady dancing to someone playing the harp on it. The music filled the valley. It was so peaceful and relaxing as we walked along the waters edge. The temple is a long way over, so plan for walking shoes, but the walk is beautiful. We enjoyed the walk as a family and had fun along the way. As we approached the palace, we chose to climb up to it along a rock path in the back and among the trees. You can take a boat over the the palace if you chose and the boat drop off point was in the front. The main entrance was packed on the holiday week and you could hardly move, so our access point made getting to the top fairly easy. As we approached the top and looked back, we noted a garden on the other side of the hill. We had to go take a look at that as well. Over all it was a busy 3 hours for us. You could spend all day at the property, enjoy a picnic along the lake. Because we had the driver for only one day, we moved on to our next adventure.

We have been to the Mountain Resort, Putuo Zongcheng (Potala Palace) Temple and Puning Si Temple in Chengde and I definitely preferred the temples over the Mountain Resort, although only a slight bit. Very nice place for taking a stroll and admiring the buildings in harmony with the nature and the lakes.

Not as beautiful in the winter. The lakes are frozen so you can walk on them. Also there are a lot of activities for kids on the ice.

Went in winter. Very cold. Lakes froze over. They made it into ice rinks. Place is historical but probably more fun in summer.

Nice trip and run away from the heat wave