Jenny: Summer Palace and Bubble Tea

This morning, we visited the Summer Palace; this is where the royal family went to spend their summers. Since the palace is surrounded by a lake and mountains, it is around 10 degrees colder than the Forbidden City, which was definitely noticeable. Everything in the Summer Palace seems to have symbolic meaning. Following the way of Fengshui, all of the buildings, statues, and paintings are carefully placed to create an atmosphere that is conducive to peace, prosperity, and happiness. For example, the walk way is in the shape of a bat to symbolize prosperity (because the word “bat” sounds similar to wealth), and the lake is in the shape of a peach to symbolize longevity. After walking around the palace, we went up to see a temple with three Buddha statues that represented the past, present, and future. Going off of the New York City analogy in my last blog, the Summer Palace reminds me of Central Park.

In the afternoon, we walked through a snack street in Wangfujing, which made me really happy. Among the foods they were making were candy hawthorne, sticky corn, fried scorpians, and stinky tofu. After the snack street, we went shopping in a large mall and bought face masks! As a midafternoon snack, we went to a bubble tea place, Coco, which a Beijing delegate had recommended to me during the conference!