Where are you Allen?

Just as European royals had lavish summer palaces not that distant from their primary homes, so it was for Chinese royals.  Located less that ten miles from central Beijing, their Summer Palace was originally built by the Jin Dynasty in the 12th Century AD.  The Jin Dynasty came to power by defeating the ruling Song Dynasty in 1127.

In 1153, Jin Emperor Wanyan Liang made Beijing capital of China for the first time, though at the time the Song Dynasty called it Yanjing.  The Jin Dynasty logically renamed the city Zhongdu, or "Central Capital."

Over the centuries, what became known as the Summer Palace had ebbs and flows, falling into disrepair only to be re-imagined and rebuilt.

In 1749, the sixth Manchurian Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, Qianlong, built a new palace in the pastoral countryside to celebrate the 60th birthday of his mother, Empress Dowager Chongqing.

Concurrently, the waterworks of Beijing required expansion, so Qianlong used this requirement for increased reservoir capacity as justification to excavate new imperial lakes at what was then called "The Garden of Clear Ripples."

A little over a century later, Empress Dowager Cixi, who you may recall appointed the Last Emperor, rebuilt this Palace using funds embezzled from the Navy officially earmarked for repairs suffered in the Second Opium War (eunuchs weren't the only government officials who could be dishonest), and it became her favorite home.  I believe it is more for Cixi than Chongqing that they also call this "The Dowager's Palace."

As a contemporary of England's Queen Victoria, Empress Dowager Cixi rose from being a minor concubine of the Emperor Xianfeng to become one of the most powerful women in world history, essentially ruling China as regent for her child, the only son of Xianfeng.

Their son died at just seven years old, but the resourceful Cixi appointed her three year-old nephew as the new Emperor in defiance of normal rules of succession.  Cixi was certainly not the only member of royalty in the world to flaunt such rules in order to hold onto power for her family.

Cixi essentially governed China for 47 years, waging wars, instituting limited government reforms, resisting modernization including her losing stand against railroads, supporting the arts and refurbishing the Dowager's Palace.

Feng shui, symbolism and beauty always seem to play major roles in Chinese palace design, and the same is true at this lakeside retreat, where the builders recreated landscape elements from mythology or natural landmarks from other parts of China.

While not as large as the Forbidden City, at 726 acres, the Summer Palace is still more than eight and a half times the size of Disneyland.

Spacious enough for us to easily lose a member of our group when we visited in the afternoon following our morning at Tainanmen Square and the Forbidden City.

Actually, I think Allen might have become sidetracked by sidewalk vendors on his way from the bus while still outside the palace gate, where our guide bought tickets for the rest of us, who found shady spots to rest and digest the huge lunch we had recently finished.

Our guide Yuan returned with tickets, and most of the group headed through the gate.

Over Yuan's microphone, we could hear Allen's alarmed wife Alice reporting him missing.

We had a continency plan just in case of such an event.

If we became separated from the group, we were supposed to return to the last place we'd seen the group and wait for Yuan to double back.  Back-up for the contingency, ask a local to call Yuan and tell him where he can find us.

Before handing out our badges, Yuan had taken the trouble to write his phone number on the back of each and every one of our badges and repeated these instructions repeatedly each time we got off the bus.

Concerned but calm, Yuan told the rest of us to wait, and he doubled back, executing the failsafe plan.

Fail.

No Allen.

"Where are you Allen?" Yuan repeated kindly over his "whisper" microphone.

Wait longer.

No Allen.

Finally, we proceeded slowly and hoped for the best.

We actually were scheduled to  have a couple of hours of free time to explore on our own, possibly climbing to the Tower of Buddhist Incense at the top of Longevity Hill.


We nonetheless hung back, having been sprung loose before Yuan had the chance to deliver his promised preliminary overview narrative about the palace.  Yuan had the higher priority of finding Allen and executing his exigency plan.


Slowly but surely the group moved along, and who should we eventually come across?

Allen!

Having undoubtedly gotten a bargain on a somewhat strange-looking straw hat which I presume Chinese farmers might wear to harvest rice, Allen must have somehow walked past everyone.

His goofy new hat proved to be sufficient camouflage to get lost in the crowd, unrecognized by anyone else in our group.

A resourceful man who like most of us on the tour didn't speak more than a word or two of Chinese, Allen had simply held up his Gate 1 badge at the gate and pressed through, saying in English that his group had already gone in ahead of him.

He raced in theoretical pursuit of his lost group only to end up pretty far ahead of us, outside of the range that Yuan's "whisper" microphone could reach his earplug receiver apparently...if he had it turned on.

There was much jubilation upon finding Allen, even if his antics had thrown us off schedule to some extent.

Allen's wife Alice was not in a similarly forgiving mood, and she let Yuan know how inconsiderate and foolish her husband had been.

Yuan happened to still have his microphone on, so we all heard Alice's tirade.

After about 15 minutes, Julie finally doubled back to tell Yuan his microphone was on, though several in our group sporting big grins asked, "Why'd you tell them?"

It had apparently been an entertaining soap opera for them to follow as they walked beside the glistening lake.

Yeah, I found it funny too.

Unfortunately for Allen, he was a memorable character in our diverse group, with the Texas twang and physical appearance of Ross Perot around the time he ran for President, so he never got lost in the crowd, and he never heard the end of it for the rest of the tour, even after he bought us all ice cream as reparations.

Allen's goofy-looking souvenir hat probably felt like a metaphorical dunce cap that he could never stop others from seeing, even long after he stopped wearing it. Still, he took the ribbing with a good-natured "aw shucks" attitude.

With a ring of truth and an ironic smile, he said that he knew his wife would make a point of calling everyone they knew to tell them about his folly as soon as they returned home.

We continued our stroll down the length of Long Gallery Corridor's 2388 feet.  It is sort of like a meandering gazebo where one side stretches on and on, winding through the gardens and past historic buildings and green hills on one side and the expansive lake on the other.  It was rarely clear ahead, and we frequently had to step outside the corridor to allow pushy tourist groups from either direction to pass us.

We believed we had lost too much time searching for Allen to visit the Tower of Buddhist Incense at the top of Longevity Hill, intent on making it on time to our official rendezvous point, the "Boat of Purity and Ease."

That "Marble Boat" is actually a stationary pavilion that would obviously sink if it ever set sail.

Once everyone arrived, we were scheduled to board one of several real boats for the scenic cruise back to the entrance.

Before we boarded, it turned out quite a few people in our group had to go to what Yuan liked to call a "happy" restroom (with a western-style toilet rather than a hole-in-the-ground), having not used any of their free time to do so.

We waited in the shade for a half hour while the return of one or two seemed to remind someone else that they needed to go too.

It gradually dawned upon us that we could have gone to the Buddhist Temple after all, perhaps following the schedule of Empress Dowager Cixi who went there to pray twice a month.

It really wasn't hard to get a little Zen-like meditation just resting in the shade after a long day during which we must have walked at least seven miles.

We were all grateful to be cruising on a dragon boat back to the entrance rather than walking.

With no meal scheduled that night, Julie and I walked around the back of the hotel to check out the local eateries, which Yuan assured us were all safe, traditional restaurants.

Not being that hungry after another enormous lunch and finding only Chinese characters on the menus, we ended up just having drinks and splitting a muffin in the small lobby bar at our hotel before turning in early.

And, in case you're reading this, Allen, you're not the only one to ever find yourself separated from a tour group in an exotic place.

It can happen to anyone.