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Jingshan Park (daily 6am-10pm; Y0.3) is a natural way to round off a trip to the Forbidden City. An artificial mound, it was created by the digging of the palace moat and served as a windbreak and a barrier to malevolent spirits (believed to emanate from the north) for the imperial quarter of the city. It takes its name, meaning Coal Hill, from a coal store once sited here. Its history, most momentously, includes the suicide of the last Ming emperor, Chong Zhen, in 1644, who hanged himself here from a lotus tree after rebel troops broke into the imperial city. The spot, on the eastern side of the park, is easy to find as it is signposted everywhere (underneath signs pointing to a children's playground), though the tree that stands here is not the original. It's the views from the top of the hill that make this park such a compelling target. They take in the whole extent of the Forbidden City, a revealing perspective, and a fair swathe of the city outside, a deal more attractive than at ground level. To the west is Beihai with its fat snake lake, in the north the Drum and Bell towers, and to the northeast the Yonghe Gong. Beihai Park (daily 6am-8pm; Y10, students Y0.5), a few hundred metres west of Jingshan on the route of bus #13 from the Yonghe Gong or #5 from Qianmen, is almost half lake in extent, and it's a favourite skating spot in the frozen winter months. It was supposedly created by Kublai Khan, long before any of the Forbidden City structures were conceived, and its scale is suitably ambitious: the lake was man-made, an island being created in its midst with the excavated earth. Emperor Qianlong oversaw its landscaping into a classical garden and Mao's widow, the ill-fated Jiang Qing, was a frequent visitor here. Today its elegance is marred by funfairs and shops among the willows and red-columned galleries, though it's still a grand place to retreat from the city and recharge. Most of the buildings (daily 6am-4pm) lie on the central island, whose summit is marked by a white dagoba, built in the mid-seventeenth century to celebrate a visit by the Dalai Lama, a suitable emblem for a park which contains a curious mixture of religious buildings, storehouses for cultural relics and imperial garden architecture. Just inside the south gate, the Round City encloses a courtyard which holds a jade bowl, said to have belonged to Kublai Khan. The white jade Buddha in the hall behind was a present from Burma. The island is accessible by a walkway from here. It's dotted with religious architecture, which you'll come across as you scramble around the rocky paths, including the Yuego Lou , a hall full of steles, and the giant dagoba sitting on top with a shrine to the demon-headed, multi-armed Lamaist deity, Yamantaka, nestling inside. An exclusive restaurant, the Fangshan, where decor, food and prices are imperial, sits off a painted corridor running round the base of the hill. There's a boat dock near here, where you can rent rowing boats , or you can get duck-shaped pedal boats from near the south gate - good ways to explore the lake and its banks. On the north side of the lake an impressive dragon screen , in good condition, is one of China's largest at 27m long. The Five Dragon Pavilions nearby are supposedly in the shape of a dragon's spine. Over on the other side of the lake, the gardens and rockeries here were popular with Emperor Qianlong, and it's easy to see why - even when the place is crowded at weekends, the atmosphere is tranquil.
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