Chengde summer resort China : It is the largest and best imperial palace

The city Chengde in Hebei Province is place  with a cool and scenic summer resort 250 kilometers northeast of Beijing. More than two hundred years ago Emperor Kang Xi (1662-1723) discovered this rare scenic spot during a hunting trip. It took eighty-seven years to complete the construction of a temporary palace in what used to be called Rehe (Jehol), also known by the quaint name "Mountain Hamlet for Escaping the Heat." The palace is enclosed by a wall over ten kilometers long, which rises and falls with the mountain ridges. It is the largest and best-preserved imperial palace outside of the capital. 

The Mountain Resort is divided into four parts: 

• the Palace Area, 
• Lake Area, Plain Area 
• and Mountain Area. 

The Palace Area lies in the south part of the Mountain Resort and is a concentration of palaces where the Qing emperors handled the political affairs and where the royal families lived. It covers an area of 100,000 sq meters (25 acres), consisting of four main complexes: 

• the Main Palace, 
• the Pine-Crane Hall, 
• the East Palace 
• and the Pine Soughing Valley. 

The Main Palace was the place where important ceremonies and events were observed but today it is used as the Mountain Resort Museum. The Pine-crane Hall was the residence built by Emperor Qianlong for his mother-the empress while the East Palace was damaged in a fire in 1945 with only the groundwork still visible today. The Pine Soughing Valley was the reading room of the emperors and the office where the emperors handled the political mandates. Many of the scenic spots around the resort‘s lake area were copied from famous landscaped gardens in south China. For instance, the main building on Green Lotus Island, "Tower of Mist and Rain," (Yanyulou) is a copy of a tower in Nanhu Lake at Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province. The resort‘s plain area possesses characteristics of the scenery of the Mongolian grasslands. Forested mountains and valleys are dotted with various building.

 In December 1994 the Mountain Resort was listed by UNESCO on its list of World Heritage Sites. It is the world's cultural heritage, national heritage conservation units, one of China's top ten attractions, and the 5A-level scenic area of the state. “Chengde Summer Resort,is the summer palace of the Qing Dynasty,”Evaluation of the World Heritage Committee appraised ,”It not only has the study of very high aesthetic value, but also maintains the rare historical sites of the end of China's feudal society.” The Eight Outer Temples As they were under eight different administrations, they were usually referred to as the "eight Outer Temples." Eleven splendid temples were built more than two hundred years ago east and north of the resort. Only seven temples remain intact today, reflecting the traditional art and culture of the Han, Manchu, Mongolian, and Tibetan nationalities. The Temple of the Potarak Doctrine (Putuozongshengmiao), occupying an area of 220,000 square meters, is by far the largest of all temples in the area. With rows of buildings rising at different levels from the south upwards, the temple is a copy of the Dalai Lama‘s Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. It was built to mark the sixtieth birthday of Emperor Qian Long and was used by him to receive nobles of the various minority nationalities in China. The Torguts, a Mongol tribe who had migrated from Xinjiang to the banks of the Volga and back, returned to their home in 1771. Together with leaders of various other nationalities, the Torguts arrived at Chengde for an audience with Emperor Qian Long when the temple was completed. This demonstrated the prosperity of a united nation at that Time. These temples were built by the use of the advantage of the Xiangyang hillside, the main hall is magnificent.