Pile of Rocks that is the Hill of Accumulated Elegance 堆秀山
The Chinese are masters of garden making and what better place to showcase this than at the heart of an emperor’s residence. The garden is usually built to represent various places in China, as with several other imperial gardens. In this case, despite the limited space, they managed to build a hill within the garden. Actually, the word hill might be a little too strong since it really isn’t that high in the first place. The Hill of Accumulated Elegance 堆秀山 is basically a large pile of stones.
That Should Be More than Enough Reason to Not Go In
However, this pile of stones is large enough for them to build a pavillion on top of the hill called Pavillion of Imperial Scenery 御景亭. In fact, there is a path around the hill which is not accessible to visitors which lead to the top of the hill. Every year, emperors and empresses climb this hill. There are other features to this hill such as a cave which I wasn’t able to see as it was deemed unsafe to climb it as annouced by several signs in the area. However, the adventurous still try to climb up a bit of the hill to just to get the perfect photo.
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