Actors? at the Imperial Summer Palace/Beijing

by Steve Reiss (Dalmdad Landscape Photography - www.dalmdad.com and https://www.facebook.com/Dalmdad.)

October 28, 2014; Beijing, China:  Today, we visited the imperial Summer Palace in northern Beijing. 

Steve and Joanie with Part of Summer Palace in Background

A single picture taken in the haze of a typical Beijing day can in no way substitute for an actual visit to the Palace and the opportunity to stand on the edge of man-made Kunming Lake and take in a true fall breeze (yeah, it is still summer in SoCal).

This location reminded me of East Lake in Wuhan, China (see trip report here).
While exploring the grounds. we saw these brightly dressed ladies collecting in the entrance way to one of the buildings.  We guessed that there was going to be some kind of Manchurian yoga demonstration.

However, we would soon be told by our personal (yes personal) tour guide Herbie (more on that in the future) that these interestingly-styled ladies were not Chinese versions of what we would call colonial Williamsburg re-enactors.  These people were actual Manchurians, not actors acting Manchurian.

***