Chengde Mountain Resort and Eight Outer Temples

UNESCO World Heritage Site (Mountain Resort And Its Outlying Temples, Chengde, 1994); National 5A Tourist Attraction · Chengde, Hebei

The summer capital of the Qing emperors: a walled imperial retreat of palaces, lakes, pavilions, grasslands and forested hills in the mountains of northern Hebei, built from 1703 under the Kangxi Emperor and expanded by Qianlong until 1792. Covering some 560 hectares within about 10 km of walls, it is the largest surviving imperial garden in China, deliberately combining the lakes and pavilions of southern China, the open grasslands of Mongolia and the wooded mountains of the north. Emperors spent months here hunting, receiving Mongol, Tibetan and foreign envoys - Qianlong met the British Macartney embassy here in 1793 - and the Xianfeng Emperor died here in 1861. Around the resort stand the Eight Outer Temples, built to impress visiting peoples of the empire: the Putuo Zongcheng Temple is a small-scale copy of Lhasa's Potala Palace, and the Puning Temple houses a towering wooden Thousand-Armed Guanyin more than 22 metres tall. Together they form a UNESCO World Heritage site about an hour from Beijing by high-speed train.

Lizhengmen Gate, Mountain Resort, Shuangqiao District, Chengde, Hebei, China

Mountain Resort daily, roughly 7:30-18:00 in the peak season (hours adjusted each year for May 1-October 9) and 8:00-17:00 in winter; outer temples roughly 8:00-17:30. Last entry about an hour before closing.

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