Our Trip to Beijing Municipality, China

3. Empress' Marble Navy

We also toured the Summer Palace. There is a lake and they rent rowboats to row in the lake. We got in the line to wait our turn but the authorities insisted we go to the front of the line and we got a boat right away. In the background is the marble boat that the Dowager Empress Ci Xi built with the funds allocated her to build a navy to repulse the foreigners. It was just as well for the boat is still there and a warship would have been long gone. After the boat ride we had our lunch on the marble boat. You can no longer board the boat. The Summer Palace is very recent. The Anglo-French troops burnt the old one and the Empress began rebuilding this one in 1873. The building and gardens are on the whole very representative of the ornate late Qing style with its fear of empty space resulting in chinoiserie crowding the architecture.