Chengde Mountain Resort – A Leading Attractive Spot in China

Chengde City is located in Hebei province of China. This prefecture level place is popular as spot of Mountain Resort that is a huge imperial garden cum palace previously used by emperors of Qing dynasty as their summer residence. This resort is also known by the name – Imperial Summer Villa. At present, it is recognized as world heritage site of UNESCO. It was built during eighteenth century.

Beautiful Mountain resort

The entire mountain resort in Chengde covers nearly 5.64 million square meters area. It is the biggest Chinese royal garden. Its wall is having a length more than ten thousand meters. The emperors during summer arrived at mountain resort to escape from high temperatures and for relaxation. This resort can be sectioned into areas that are hills area, plain area, and lakes area. Plain area includes the area where emperors used to conduct hunting and horse races. Lakes area consists of mainly eight lakes. Hills area is the prime one it terms of area. Numerous palaces as well as temples are constructed here. This highly structured mountain resort has large parks, gardens, administrative buildings, ceremonial buildings, and pagodas too. All these are being ringed by wall. Exterior to wall is main eight outer temples that are constructed in differing architectural styles. One highly popular temple among them is Putuo Zhongcheng temple that resembles great Potala Palace located in Lhasa of Tibet.

Since 1994, Chengde mountain resort along with these outlying temples is positioned as a heritage site. It possesses rich as well as vast collection of architecture and landscapes of China. This is a harmonious blend of pastureland, forests and lakes.

Popular mountain resort

Chengde Mountain Resort is popular for seventy two beautiful spots that are named by Qianlong and Kangxi emperors. The majority of these spots in lake area of resort were in fact copied from well known landscaped gardens of South China. An example is Tower of Mist and Rain which is prime building located on Green Lotus Island. The plain area of Mountain Resort in Chengde has features of landscape of Mongolian grasslands. Valleys as well as forested mountains are perfectly dotted with several buildings. This area has a tall stone pagoda with height of seventy meters. This pagoda is having an octagonal shape for its base and nine stories that are well decorated using multicolored glazed tiles.

Both garden and palace zones are beautiful. The Lizheng main gate is the entrance to Front Palace that has throne hall and another Hall of simplicity and sincerity. This palace is built using nanmu, which is an aromatic hardwood. The interior of each palace is well furnished and maintained. There are several exhibitions of drum stones, calligraphy, ceramics and more in halls of each palace.

How you can reach to the resort?

To be specific, it is situated two hundred fifty kilometers northeast of Beijing, the capital of China. There are perfectly constructed rail and road links from Beijing to Chengde. Therefore, it is very easy to reach there. The rapid growth of its economy and self development into strong distribution hub has offered travelers better facilities for easy transportation. New freeways have been planned for Chengde. The recently constructed Jingcheng Expressway links central Beijing directly to Chengde. One can reach mountain resort from Chengde city or railway station by bus or taxi. To get around, the best option is to hire electric auto