China | Hebei Province | Chengde Summer Resort

From Ulaan Butong we drove south to the old Qing Summer Resort at Chengde and spent the night.

Qing Emperor Kangxi (r.1661-1722), founder of Chengde Summer Resort

The next morning I was up early and joined the thousand or more people funneling into the summer resort. A ticket to the resort grounds is an unbelievable 90 yuan ($11.22) for Chinese and foreigners alike (the notoriously frugal Kangxi would be appalled), although surely the many elderly retirees present get a free pass or at least some kind of discount. As the sign notes, after a sojourn to the Mulan Hunting Grounds Emperor Qianlong retired here to the Pavilion to Enjoy Chilly Fragrance.

Pavilion to Enjoy Chilly Fragrance

Oldsters doing the Tai Chai thing in the courtyard of the Pavilion to Enjoy Chilly Fragrance.

Although it is early spring and not much vegetation is out yet there were some nice blooming shrubs in the Pavilion to Enjoy Chilly Fragrance.

Another nearby pavilion

Yet another pavilion

The resort’s many secluded nooks are handy for lovers young and old

Another pavilion

The surprisingly austure quarters of the Qing Empress Dowager Cixi, who if we are to believe the many lurid accounts written about her engaged in an Endless Series of Orgies and Bacchanals. Modern historians have tended to discount many of these stories.

Students from the Chengde Tourism Institute with their teacher (in the red sweater). They were having a class at the resort itself, part of which included befriending foreign tourists and guiding them around for free. Their English teacher is from the Philippines and although she speaks English with an almost pure American accent claims to have never been in the USA.

China | Chengde | Sledgehammer Rock

Took the cable car up to Sledgehammer Rock, a strangely shapely natural stone formation on the skyline above Chengde.

In local lore the rock has come to represent the manhood of Chengde's male population. There is a legend that if the rock should ever fall down the virility of local men would be irreparably damaged. The local joke is that half the women in Chengde are trying to prop the rock up and the other half are trying to knock it down.

China | Chengde | Qing Emperors' Residence

The relatively modest living quarters of the Qing emperors at the Chengde Mountain Resort. They liked to think they were roughing it when they came here for the summer, although of course they had several hundred servants and concubines in waiting, to say nothing of officials, bodyguards, troops, and assorted hangers-on.

Living Quarters

Throne of the Qing Emperors

China | Chengde | Qing Dynasty Summer Resort

The Mountain Resort of Jehol, or Chengde. The wall encompasses a park of 139,000 acres. The entire complex was built between the years 1703 and 1792 by the emperors Kangxi and then Qianlong as a place to retire to in the summer and escape the heat of Beijing. Zanabazar, the first Bogd Gegen of Mongolia, visited here with Kangxi in the 1690s, when apparently there was only a few small hunting lodges and temples.

Section of the wall surrounding the park

The hilly, forested interior of the park

China | Chengde | More Temples

Puning Si, the Temple of Universal Peace, It was built in 1755 to commemorate the defeat of the Dzungars. Many of the buildings, such as the ones shown here, are just empty shells meant for decoration.


Puning Si


The Mahayana Hall is the centerpiece of Puning Si, and one of the few actual temples. Supposedly modeled on the main temple of Samye Monastery in Tibet, it contains an enormous 75-foot high wooden statue of Guanyin - according to a plaque from the Guinness Book of World Records the largest wooden statue in the world.


The Pule Si (Temple of Universal Happiness) dates from 1766–67, built by Qianlong as a place for Mongols to worship. The are two sections of mixed providence. The Front Section is in traditional Han style. The back is devoted to Tibetan Buddhism, but mimics in appearance the round Temple of Heaven in Beijing. There is a tantric god in in the yab-yum position in the main temple, although it is extremely difficult to see and it is not clear what god it is.


Pule Si


Pule Si


The Ili-miao Temple (or Anyuan Miao—Temple of Appeasing the Borders). Built in 1764. This is a model of the Guerzha Temple once located on the northern bank of the Ili River in what is now Xinjiang, China. The original temple was destroyed during the Dzungarian Wars. The huge statue in the middle is said to be Green Tara, although I saw somewhere else that it is actually Kshitigarbha. The hand gestures are not those usual shown in connection with Green Tara, and the whole statue has a masculine look to it, noticeably lacking the Ample Breasts often given to Green Tara. The lower half of the temple is stone and brick; the upper half wood. The statue of Tara (?) is back with a magnificently ornamented aureole. The temple was built for the 1200 Dzungar Mongol men, and presumably their familes, who settled here in 1759 after the defeat of the Dzungarians by the Qing.

China | Chengde | Xumifushshouzhi Miao

Next door to the Putuozongcheng Temple is the The Xumifushshouzhi Miao (“Temple of Sumeru Happiness and Longevity” or according another translation “Temple of Mountainous Good Fortune and Honorable Old Age”), built in 1780 for the visit of the Sixth Panchen Lama to Chengdu.


The Xumifushshouzhi Miao

The Hall of Loftiness and Solemnity in the the Xumifushshouzhi Miao, with huge brass dragons on top.


Each of these babies weighs over a ton

China | Chengde | Putuozongcheng Temple

Caught the 7:16 train from Beijing Main Station to Chengde, or Jehol, as it is sometimes called, the summer resort and Buddhist center created by the Qing Emperors, starting with Kangxi. Zanabazar came here several times with Kangxi in the late 1690s. The train arrived in Chengde at 11:40 and I headed straight for the Putuozongcheng Temple (Temple of Potaraka Doctrine), built in 1771 by Kangxi’s grandson the Qing Emperor Qianlong.


Putuozongcheng Temple from the wall of the Summer Palace Resort
This temple was built in imitation of the Potala in Lhasa, as Qianlong explained in an inscription on a stele in the entrance way.


Qianlong’s Stele
Partial translation of the inscription written by Qianlong, which is given in Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Manchurian:

North of the Summer Palace lies the Potala, which was built not after the Potala on the Southern Sea, but after the Tibetan Potala. The Tibetan Potala is complete in all respects and a religious center for our vassals. In the year Keng-yin (1770) our 60th birthday fell, and, in the year Hsin-mao (1771) the 80th birthday of our august mother, the Dowager Empress. The loyal princes from Mongolia and Sinjiang, etc., and the Chiefs of the Dzungar Tribes, who had recently sworn alliance to us, gathered together to bring their good wishes. As a sign of our encouragement and friendliness to towards them we had already begun to build this temple. It was begun in the 32nd year of Ch’ien-lung [Qianlong] (1171). The labour required was great, the temple rooms are large and everything is dignified and clean in accordance with the precepts. Our vassals over the border all believe in the religion of Sakyamuni. Jehol was the spot where our grandfather the Emperor K’ang-his, pacified and appeased them, and there he granted them audiences . . . Now the temple is finished in time for a great national event that is to be celebrated by all, in a unique manner . . . In addition to this, the Torgot, who have lived in Russia for some time, have returned for religious reasons. The whole of their tribe—which numbers many ten-thousands—arrived just at this time, after wandering about for more than six months. Here is a connection that is mystic.

Front Façade of the main temple

The courtyard behind the facade

Roof the Golden Temple in the courtyard of the larger temple