The Summer Palace  

The Summer Palace has a history of over 800years.In 115, when the Jin Dynasty made Beijing (then called Yanjing) its capital, it built an imperial palace (the Golden Hill Palace) on the present site of the Summer Palace, In 1750, Emperor Qianlong spent 4.48 million taels of silver (140,000 kilos of silver) building the Garden of Clear Ripples in 15 years and changed the name of the hill to Longevity Hill to celebrate his mother’s birthday. He also named the lake Kunming because he wanted to follow the example of Emperor Wudi (156BC-87BC; reigned 140BC-87BC) of the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) who had trained his navy centuries before in Kunming Pool in Chang’an(somewhere near Xi’an today).
In 1860, the Anglo French allied forces invaded Beijing and burned down the palace, In 1888, Empress Dowager CiXi had it restored with the funds (30 million taels of silver or 937,500kilograms) intended for the development of the navy and renamed it the Summer Palace. In 1900, it was again plundered, this time by the invading troops of the Eight-Power Allied Forces (Britain, Untied States, Germany, France, Tsarist Russia, Japan, Italy and Austria). The big temples and halls at the back of the Longevity Hill were destroyed. Only one temple remained, the Hall of Sea of Wisdom, a stone structure. In 1903 the Empress Dowager spent a fabulous sum of money to have the palace reconstructed a second time. The Summer Palace of today is more or less the same as the palace rebuilt in 1903. After the last Qing Emperor Puyi was thrown out of the Summer Palace in 1924, this place was turned into a park. But the admission charge was very high, about the piece of a bag of wheat flour, equivalent to 60 yuan now.
Since 1949 the Chinese Government has renovated the Summer Palace several times and numerous trees and flowers have been planted. This old imperial garden has taken on a completely new look and become one of the most popular parks in Beijing.
Today, every year the Summer Palace receives 6 to 7 million visitors both from home and abroad. Of whom 70% are domestic visitors; 20%of them are Beijing residents; 10% are from overseas, and 90%of these overseas visitors are group tourists.In1980s, the Summer Palace received more than 200,000 visitors in a single day.