A Visit to the Old and Not-So-Old Summer Palaces

As a Brit, it’s quite an embarrassing experience visiting Yiheyuan, the Summer Palace. You see, it was my countrymen (along with their French allies) who destroyed the place, back in 1860. I didn’t have to look up that date, because every single building has an informational board outside describing its history, and every single board says that the original building was “destroyed by Anglo-French forces in 1860.” After a while it became a running joke.

“Oh no!” we would say. “Somebody appears to have destroyed this temple. I wonder who might have done such a thing. And when. Perhaps this board will inform us?”

The Palace has been largely restored in the 150 years since this Unfortunate Incident (and we won’t even mention the fact that the allies came and did it again in 1900). It’s now one of Beijing’s most important tourist attractions, and so we felt that it was about time we paid it a visit – even if, for once, I was tempted to pretend to be American.

Click "Read more" for the rest of this story.

This post originally appeared on our sister site beijing-kids.com.

Photos: Karen Killeen