Temple of Heaven (天坛)

I'm a bit behind in the blogging, but I still intend to post events in order. On the 14th, I went to the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. With me were two Australian guys, one is a Kung-Fu master who came to Beijing to do a television performance, and the other is one of his students from down under.

The temple of heaven is a large park in the south end of the city [google-map], with two actual temples and a large mound on the southernmost-end. The most interesting aspect of the temples is that they are made of large wooden sections affixed together without the use of any nails. It was built in the 15th century, as a sacrificial temple. They sacrificed animals, not humans, as far as I know. The three items are lined up in a NS direction, and are connected by a long raised stone road, called the Sacred Way Bridge. This web page has some good additional info.

The temples were quite nice, worth seeing. The central temple is enclosed in a near-perfectly circular wall, called the Echo Wall. Supposedly, you can hear someone whispering from one side to the other, but all I experienced was a bunch of yelling kids.

Almost more impressive than the temples were the grounds, a large expanse of symmetrical trees, many cypress, eucalyptus, and other fancy and old species. There were a whole slew of locals there playing mahjongg, cards and music. I doubt they had to pay 30kuai to enter the park...

After leaving the temple, we visited the HongQiao Pearl Market, just down the street. The 3rd floor displayed more pearls than I've ever seen in my life. Think of a floor in the Eaton Centre, packed with 2x2m stalls displaying hundreds of pearl necklaces and jewellery each. Madness. Apparently, you can get really good prices for pearls there, but that didn't interest me much. More interesting was the 1st floor, with electronics. We talked down an 8gb flash card from 400Y to 75Y (6.5Y=1CAD, so from $60 to $12). The sucky thing about it was that it's usb1.1, though it says usb2.0, so it's essentially useless since it takes a little over 1.5hr to fill it. We were still proud to have bargained down the ripoff so well.

Our next destination was the Silk Road market. On our way there, we passed by an old section of one of the walls that used to surround Beijing, the former second ring wall. One section was left intact, the rest of the walls were all torn down during the Mao era to make room for roads and to make the inner city less elite. The Silk Road Market is an even large market with more clothing and trinkets. It's a very famous foreigner destination here. The prices were higher, and the haggling less-fierce, so overall, not as good as the Pearl Market.

To end the day, we went to a Subway to eat. It was pretty good, unlike the Pizza Huts here (Chinese don't know from cheese!). A 12' melt was 32Y, which is about $5CAD. Next door they had milkshakes for 25Y, quite a rip for a bit of ice cream but they did look quite tasty.

Pan shot of the main temple.

No doing anything of any kind! Seriously!
A walkway.
Eavestrough spout.
The "Long Corridor", which may as well be called the "Old Chinese People Gambling Corridor"
Clay rooftops, I love them!
Dragon-pattern marble carvings found all over the temple grounds.
The Temple of Heaven.
Inside the temple. Such intricate paint-work. I didn't realize paint could last so many centuries! Jk, they repainted it all just recently, and they hired top-notch painters who spent 4 months repainting this temple alone, using tiny brushes.
A cauldron.
Apparently I like this cauldron.
Temple from the lower platform.

Temple behind its gate, from the Sacred Way Bridge.
BIRDS in BEIJING! I had to take a picture.
Eucalyptus trees.

From the raised altar on the south end of the complex. Don't you expect to Raiden to come flying out of the temple?

They coated these trees with this browny-clay stuff, perhaps a method of disease or infestation prevention.

A beautiful, old and gnarled tree.
Long corridor on right, facing the main temple.
Haha!
The aptly named "Animal Killing Pavillion" was closed. Unfortunately, no sacrifices were witnessed.
The Pearl Market, facing South.

This guy tried really hard to sell me this kite. Instead, I just took a picture of it.
The old wall 2nd ring wall.
It was cracking, could use some restoration!