The Summer Palace - Part 3 - Empress Cixi

The Empress Dowager Cixi started Imperial life as a concubine, but worked her way up into the inner circle of the Emperor and gave him a son. She was a shrewd and skilled politician and manipulator who schemed her way into power when the Emperor died.

Keeping first her son, and then later her nephew, in a kind of house arrest inside the Summer Palace, she wielded power through them as children and even as young men. Many blame her for the downfall of the Qing dynasty, though foreign influences and power would likely have led to the same end.

Traditionally, in bronze sculpture, the Emperor is depicted as a Dragon, and the Empresses depicted as a pair of Phoenixes by his side. So great was Cixi's power and ego, that she had built a hall in which a single Phoenix is flanked by a pair of Dragons.

Her excesses included the building of a huge marble paddleboat at the Summer Palace using money intended for the Chinese navy. Unfortunately, the grounds of the Summer Palace are so huge that I never made it over to see the boat.

The Qing dynasty finally fell when the young Emperor Puyi abdicated the throne (to avoid death) and was evicted from the Imperial City in 1924 (as depicted in the movie the Last Emperor).

The last part of the Summer Palace that I got to visit, before my time (and camera battery) ran out, was the Long Corridoor. The corridor is a covered outdoor walkway that stretches for 784 metres (so that the Emperor could stroll along the lake side without having to be in the sun). The corridor is interrupted by a couple of pavillions so that the Emperor could rest and view the lake.

Originally the corridor was simply painted red and blue to protect it from the elements, but one Emperor began having paintings transferred and recreated in the corridor. There are now over 14,000 paintings along the way.

Unfortunately, on the day of my visit, the corridor was closed to pedestrian traffic, and was patrolled by guards, so I was not able to walk along it. In truth, I was pretty much exhausted by the time I got there anyway.

This was by far the nicest day (weather and scenery) of any I have had here. There is just so much to see. I could probably come back for two or three more visits if only I had the time.

Note that some of the pictures in this post are really unrelated to the narrative. These include the lotus flower, a symbol of purity and perfection, and the stone walkway through the forest, which I just thought was pretty.