So the weekend comes and you are feeling adventurous and with strong urge to challenge the roads North of Beijing 
This is where you decide to take a road trip of roughly 150 miles from Beijing. The destination is Chengde — an old imperial resort North of Beijing. Yes, this is definitely an adventure. Here is a summary of the trip and some photos for you.
Chengde is best known as the summer resort for the Qing dynasty emperors. For those of you who would really like to get a deep understanding of the Qing dynasty, here is a very comprehensive study of that period: New Qing Imperial History: The Making of the Inner Asian Empire at Qing Chengde
Probably the main attraction there is the Mountain Park / Resort, which includes a vast area of gardens, lakes, pagoda, and palaces. The whole place, of course is surrounded by a wall. Outside of the imperial park are several temples (the 8 Outer Temples) — all built as replicas or in the style of famous sites around China. Probably the most famous one is the Pǔtuó Zōngchéng (in Chinese: 普陀宗乘) – essentially a temple built to resemble the Potala Palace in Lhasa / Tibet. Here are some photos from the Putuo Zongcheng — first several from 1987/88 (Yes, I was in China then as my first stay there (as a student)) and then a few from last several months (2006/07) — more pictures will show up in the photo album section soon enough:
Getting to Chengde and going home, though is at least half the fun. Heading out towards that city you will take the “famous” JingShun Road (it could be really congested and slow), you will go through Huairou,
and eventually you can get on the JingCheng (Beijing – Chengde) Expressway or you could continue on the back country roads (interesting but quite challenging from traffic point of view). On your way to Chengde you could also spend time at the Simatai section of the Great Wall. If you do that though you may want to plan to spend the night either near Simatai or in Chengde and make it a two day trip.
