Street Special: streets around the Forbidden City

In the minds of all Chinese, the Beihai Park is closed associated with one song, Every student learns to sing this song, which lavishes loving tribute on the lake, the boats and the white pagoda. It was a popular song of the nineteen fifties, and remains the musical expression of childhood innocence.

Beihai is part of a royal garden that evolved over five dynasties. Here you can find many small exquisite gardens, designed along the lines of the famous gardens in Southern China. The royal garden is one of the few places that people who lived inside the royal palace were permitted to visit outside the Forbidden City.

The White Pagoda was built on the ruins of another palace, the Guanghan Gong, or the Cool Moon Palace. When the famous traveler Marco Polo visited China, he was invited over here to that palace, and he recorded that party in his travelogue.

Chinese legends have it that there were three hills floating on the East Sea, and on these three hills lived the immortals. The Round City, Qionghua Island and Yingtai were created to represent that legend. Once you are on top of Qionghua Island, you get a birds-eye view of the area over the lake. The pagoda, which stands about 35 meters high, was originally built in 1651. Its architecture is in the style of the Tibetan Buddhists, and inside you will find Tibetan Buddhist inscriptions.