Thursday October 15, 2009 |
|
| TIME | ACTIVITIES |
08:00 |
Get together at the lobby of Wenjin Hotel |
08:30 |
Leave for Prince Gong's Palace |
09:30 |
Tour at Prince Gong's Palace and Hutong |
12:00 |
Lunch at Fangshan Restaurant |
14:00 |
Visit at Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall |
15:45 |
Free Time at Qianmen |
17:30 |
Dinner at Quanjude Restaurant |
19:00 |
Show at Laoshe Teahouse |
Prince Gong’s Palace (Gong Wang Fu) is the world's largest courtyard house and is a comparatively well preserved Princes residence in Beijing. Covering 5.7 hectares of land in the core area of Beijing, the palace consists of three lines of buildings and is divided into two parts, the living quarter and the garden. Altogether, the complex has over 20 separate areas, each different in layout and style. Part of the garden inside the Prince Gong's Residence is in the northern side of the living quarter where turning corridor, pavilion, mountain rock, flowers and trees are all in elegant layout. In the stone cave of the rockery above the lake, there is the Emperor Kang Xi's inscription of Chinese character (Good Fortune).
Fangshan Restaurant is located in Yilantang Hall on the north side of the Jade Isle, Beihai Park, where Empress Dowager Cixi (1835 - 1908) used to take her meals after sight – seeing in the park. The food made in the Qing Palace for the emperors was called imperial food, so a restaurant operating outside the palace making and selling imperial food was only an imitation.
The restaurant’s staple food was wheaten products, such as baked sesame seed cakes with fried minced-meat filling and pastries shaped like apple, peach, fingered citron, and lucky rolls. Whatever wheaten food you ate, you received a good luck message: apple – all is well; peach – longevity, you will live a long life; lucky rolls – everything is fine.
Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall is designed to introduce the long history of the immortal city of Beijing, display the great achievements of the modern urban planning and development, and exhibit the splendid future of Beijing's urban development. The 16,000 square-meter floor space is distributed on 4 floor levels in the Hall, with 8,000 square meters for exhibits.
On the second floor there is a bronze relief sculpture of The Old City of Beijing is 10-meter high and 9-meter wide with a scale of 1:1,000. The third floor features the evolution of the old city of Beijing with a large amount of photos, old maps, wells of the Han Dynasty and gate frusta and column heads of the Qing Dynasty, as well as models of courtyard houses and various gateways. On the fourth floor there is a 3-D film cinema which covers a floor area of 400 square meters with a 120-degree arc screen and is able to show wide-screen movies and virtual-reality city animations.
Qianmen is the common name for the gateway formally known as Zhengyangmen (Sun-facing Gate). It is located at the south of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City on Beijing's historic central axis. The 840-meter Qianmen street starts from the north at Jianlou (Arrow Tower) and runs south until Tiantan Road. It became a commercial street about 570 years ago, reaching its peak in the 1920s and 1930s and remains a well-known tourist attraction with alleys filled with specialty stores. Qianmen Street is intersected by the famous Dazhalan Hutong, where ancient Chinese medicine shops, fine silk clothing and age-old handicrafts are located.
Quanjude Restaurant was founded in 1864 during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), which is one of the most renowned restaurants in China. Quanjude Roast Duck enjoys a high reputation among domestic and overseas consumers for the peculiar roast technique and outstanding quality. Throughout the years, Quanjude dishes have been greatly enriched due to development and innovation. The well-known All-Duck Banquet here is headed by Quanjude roast duck and supported by over 400 dishes with Quanjude characteristic flavor.
Laoshe Teahouse is named after Mr. Lao She, a famous artist in China, and Tea House, one of his famous novels. With service area of more than 2,600 square meters, the teahouse provides an antique-flavor, Beijing-styled environment, where you can watch wonderful performances by celebrities from folk arts and drama on any given day while enjoying famous tea, palace snacks as well as traditional Beijing flavor state. Numerous celebrities and more than 2 million Chinese and foreign tourists have visited Laoshe Teahouse since it was founded in 1988. It has been a window for exhibiting the national culture and a bridge that connects China with the world.