Best places to enjoy spring flowers in Beijing

Beijing Botanical Garden

Beijing Botanical Garden is situated in the western outskirts of the city between Xiangshan Park and Yuquan Mountain. With intriguing rockeries, clear ponds and elegant bridges, the garden is a wonderful place to explore natural beauty. Beijing Botanical Garden is the largest in North China, with a great variety of greenhouses, rare trees and stunning flowers, as well as a number of historical attractions, such as Cao Xueqin Memorial and Liang Qichao Tomb


Summer Palace

Situated in the northwest suburbs of Beijing, the Summer Palace is the largest and best-preserved royal garden, and one of the four most famous gardens in China. It was first built in 1750 and restored in 1886 as a summer resort for Empress Dowager Cixi after being destroyed during the Second Opium War in 1860.The Summer Palace landscape features a variety of palaces, gardens and other ancient-style architectural structures.

Beijing Zoo

Beijing Zoo was known for a short time after the founding of the People's Republic as the Western Suburbs Park (Xijiao Gongyuan). The grounds combine cultivated flower gardens with stretches of natural scenery, including dense groves of trees, stretches of grassland, a small stream, lotus pools and small hills dotted with pavilions and halls.

Beijing Zoo mainly exhibits wild and rare animals of China. The Giant Pandas are one of the most popular exhibits, but other popular animals including the Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkey, Manchurian tigers, white-lipped deer, yaks from Tibet, enormous sea turtles, polar bears from the North Pole, kangaroo from Australia, and zebra from Africa.

The zoo is also a center of zoological research that collects and breeds rare animals from various continents.

Beihai Park

Beihai Park, located to the west of the Forbidden City and Jingshan Park, is the oldest and best-preserved ancient imperial garden in China. It was the former royal palace for successive dynasties. The park has an area of 68 hectares, half of which is covered by the Taiye Lake. On the Mid-Autumn Day evening, rowing a boat in the glistening water, with glorious full moon up in the sky, artificial hills, pavilions and corridors flowing around, your body and soul will be relaxed.

Tanzhe temple

As a typical Buddhist temple, Tanzhe Temple stands on Tanzhe Hill in the western outskirts of Beijing. Its origins certainly predate the formation of much of Beijing, as the first reference to the site was noted in the Western Jin Dynasty (265－316), but most of what forms the temple today was constructed in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Covering an area of over 41,000 square meters, the temple consists of some pavilions, prayer halls, group of pagodas, courtyards and gardens dating from the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. The gardens contain various kinds of trees and flowers, but the magnolia flower is the most famous, some of which are of 300-year-old history.

Taoranting Park

Taoranting Park, located in the southwest, derives its name from the Joyous Pavilion that once stood on the grounds of the Temple of Mercy (Cibeiyuan).

Jiang Zao, a secretary in the Ministry of Works, built the pavilion in 1695 during the reign of Emperor Kangxi. Therefore, it was also known as Jiang Pavilion. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, a brick kiln was built in the neighborhood of the Temple of Mercy at what is now the Kiln Terrace.

Jingshan Park

Jingshan Park, also known as "Prospect Hill Park", is situated just north of the Palace Museum, next to Beihai and Houhai. During the Yuan Dynasty (1206－1368), it was for royal family members and was only opened to the public after 1928. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the park has been renovated several times, and has now become one of the most ancient parks in the capital. Covering an area of more than 230,000 square meters, the park is famous for its large peony garden. Each year, a Peony Flower Show is held including hundreds of kinds of peony from home and abroad.


Source: people's daily via china.org

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