Chengde - Bishu Shanzhuang Imperial Palace

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Visitors enter the relatively small palace area through the Gateway of Beauty (Lizheng Men), which has three entrance passages, a large central one which was reserved for the Emperor and two smaller ones at the side. The following buildings make up the whole complex: the Main Hall (Zheng Gong), decorated with rich carvings in the finest nanmu wood, where the Emperor received his ministers, generals, representatives of national minorities and diplomatic envoys; the Palace of Foaming Waves (Qing Gong) which contained the Emperor's bed-chamber; The Hall of Pine and Cranes (Songhe Zhai), where the mothers and some of the Emperor's concubines lived; the Hall of The Sighing Pines and Ten Thousand Valleys, which the Emperor used for study and rest.

The parkland is itself divided into three parts - the lake area, which boasts various kinds of summer-houses, pavilions and stone bridges, the hilly part and the flat gardens.

Its most picturesque and attractive features are the artificially laid-out south Chinese private gardens, in imitation of the grass steppes of Mongolia and the mountains north of the Blue River. At the south end of the lake area a stone bridge with three small Shuixin pavilions spans the Silver Lake and the Lower Lake, and in the northern part stands the House of Mists and Rain (Yanyu Lou), from where the Emperor enjoyed a view of the mountains on rainy days.

To the northwest will be found Wenjin Ge, built in 1774 and one of the seven libraries of the Qianlong Emperor. Among the well-known works kept here is one of the few copies of the Siku Quanshu collection of literature, comprising 36,304 volumes (the complete works are now stored in the State Museum in Beijing).