Everyone's heard of the Summer Palace. But not everyone has heard of its OG cousin, the Old Summer Palace (Yuanming Yuan - 圆明园). Formerly the most famously beautiful garden and palace complex in the whole of China, it is now an enormous park covered with walking trails, lakes, rivers, bridges, gardens, and the odd ruin or two.
History
The Old Summer Palace was built during the 1700s and 1800s as the residence of the Qing dynasty emperors. The Qianlong Emperor (who was a real renaissance man) did a lot to expand the gardens, including the Western Mansions portion of the grounds which are the most visible remains of the palace today.
If you are a white person, prepare to feel slightly uncomfortable when you visit the palace: British and French forces razed the place to the ground in 1860, and a foreign army had another go round in 1900. Many of the imperial treasures were carted off to London and Paris where they (probably) remain. Prepare to see these facts repeated over and over on information boards throughout the gardens, and if you can speak Chinese you can be sure to hear them repeated very regularly by tour guides.
What to do there
Most people will arrive at the Southern gate which is beside the Yuanming Yuan subway station. From here, you enter the park and walk north. The main recommendation is to get off the main path as quickly as possible - unless, that is, you are one of those sickos which love being sandwiched between tour groups wearing inexplicably matching caps and/or lightweight plastic jackets. The best part of this park, in my humble opinion, is how easy it is to get away from the crowds: the main pathways are very crowded but turn down any smaller side trail and you will almost immediately be lost amongst the gardens and trees without another soul in sight. In Beijing, this is priceless.
Another amazing thing about the Old Summer Palace is that it seems there is no "keep off the grass" concept - you can pretty much wander anywhere which is not fenced off. The first time you do this feels slightly unreal, as you are waiting for some officious park warden to go to town on you (which would happen almost anywhere else in the world if they caught you straying from the path in a former imperial pleasure palace). But once you realise that (probably) won't happen, it is amazing to go walking through the forests and hills knowing that not so long ago only imperial China's god-kings (and a few thousand servants, eunuchs etc) were able to tread this ground.
Must-visit parts of the park?
The Old Summer Palace is seriously big, even for Beijing. Unless you are seriously motivated to get the most out of your RMB30 entrance fee, you probably just want to spend 2 hours there and then start pounding some yanjing beer in a dirty side street. With that in mind, I would suggest walking from the South gate (where you come in from the subways station) and heading due north. As soon as you can, branch off onto one of the side trails which run through the hills, they pretty much run parallel to the main path and you are often hemmed in by waterways, so hopefully you won't get lost.
Keep following the signs to the Western Mansions - these are at the far northern end of the park so you will get to see quite a bit of the park as you make your way up. It is worth going to the Western Mansions; it is an area where quite a bit of the building was done in carved stone, so even though the British and French burnt the place to the ground (again, get used to hearing that) there are many partly standing carved stone walls, smashed up fountains, and other relics. These are scattered around the grass in a manner which makes you feel like you are an extra in Planet of the Apes; if that movie was set in China. There is also a maze here, which is about as chaotic as you would expect a maze in a popular park in China to be.
Yo, anything to eat there bro?
If you're asking this, then clearly you are planning to go to China but have never been. The answer to that question is ALWAYS yes. This is a country which rewards the sloppy last-minute tourist; there is always a food or drink stand nearby, or some 80 year old grandmother from a nearby village who pops out of the shrubbery having made a 500m vertical climb with an esky on her back to save you from dehydration because you were too hung over to properly think about what a day trip to the Great Wall in the middle of summer would involve. That's a side note. But yes, there are a heap of drink and food options here. One cool one, particularly if you're travelling with kids, is to try the Blown Sugar People （吹糖人). This is an amazing name for a band, and also the name of a traditional Beijing snack which is made by sugar blowing (similar to glass blowing, I assume). The customer - let's pretend it is your child/nephew/niece and not you, to save embarrassment - gets passed a "tube" of toffee-like substance which connects with a glob of the stuff being held by the sugar artist. As the customer blows into the tube, the sugar artist fashions the toffee into an animal shape (or some other shape) which is placed on a stick for the customer to eat like a lollypop.
Key information
Take the subway to Yuanming Yuan station (it's on line 4 of the subway), get off, and walk about 50m to the South gate of the park.
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