2 Days Private Chengde Tour from Beijing

This morning, please go to Beijing’s railway station for your 1 hour high speed train journey to Chengde by yourself. We will book Beijing/Chengde/Beijing round trip train tickets for you in advance. To enter the train station, you can just have your passport checked at the manual check entrance. Upon your arrival, your guide and driver in Chengde will give you a warm welcome and then drive you to the hotel to check in.

Your trip starts from the Mountain Resort of Chengde. It used to be the summer resort for emperors in the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1911 AD) and now is one of the largest existing classical imperial gardens in China. Construction of the Mountain Resort started in 1703 and completed after 89 years. Since then, the emperors would reside in and handle political affairs here to escape the sweltering heat in Beijing in summer. The garden is a microcosm of China’s geography, with most water area in the southeast and mountain area in the northwest. It can be divided into four areas: Palace Area, Lake Area, Plain Area and Mountain Area. In the southeast is the Lake Area. The Plain Area is in the north, composed of a scenery similar to Mongolian pastureland and lush towering ancient trees. Covering four fifths of the whole scenic area, the Mountain Area in the northwest has green rolling mountains with palaces and temples nestling here and there. Different from the Forbidden City in Beijing, the architecture of the Mountain Resort, built with black bricks and green tiles, is more simple and elegant. After the tour, as it will be late in the afternoon, we will escort you back to the hotel.

Accommodation: Yun Shan Hotel

After breakfast, we will continue our trip to the Puning Temple and Putuo Zongcheng Temple, the grandest two of the eight Tibetan Buddhist temple complexes to the north of the Mountain Resort.

Puning Temple is the largest functioning lamasery in northern China. Its construction begun during the reign of Emperor Qianlong (1735 - 1796 AD) in Qing Dynasty. The front part adopts the architecture of traditional Chinese Buddhist temples while the latter is of Tibetan style. In the main hall is enshrined a relic honored with a Guinness record - the world's largest wooden Guanyin Bodhisattva. It is 23.52 meters (77 feet) high which almost equals to a six-storey building. Pieced together with carved preservative treated timber from various species of trees, the Buddha invites you to feel a moment of holy solemnity.

Then we will go to Putuo Zongcheng Temple, which models after the Potala Palace - a mecca to Tibetan Buddhists - in Tibet. It was built to celebrate the 60th birthday of Qianlong. Covering an area of 22 hectares, it is the largest-scale temple complex here near the resort. In the rear of the complex and perching on the mountain top is the main structure, the Grand Red Platform, at the center of which is a magnificent Wanfa Guiyi Hall, meaning the hall in which all is one and interconnected. Like the wooden Guanyin Bodhisattva in Puning Temple, the hall is another man-made miracle in the architectural world, whose copper roof was gilded with 0.7 tons of gold. Other surviving 40 buildings scatter along the mountain stretch without an obvious axis, exuding an exotic asymmetrical charm hardly seen in traditional Chinese buildings.

Your Chengde tour from Beijing draws to an end here. We will transfer you to the railway station to take the train back to Beijing. As there are many high speed trains operated per day, we can help book the ticket according to your schedule. After about 1 hour's train ride, you will arrive in Beijing. Hope you’ve had an enjoyable time with us!