June 3 – the Temple of Heaven and Tiananmen Square
Beijing is turning out to be much more demanding than the river cruise. Our day starts with the mandatory wake-up call at 06:30, quickly followed by Death By Buffet at 07:00. Then it’s on board the bus at 08:00, and we won’t be back until after dinner! Today starts with a visit to the Pearl Market, followed by the Temple of Heaven and lunch at the lake. Then we’re off to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, followed by dinner and back to the hotel at 8 pm. Yikes!
The Pearl Market is exactly that. Big market. Lots of pearls. Nuff said. The Temple of Heaven, on the other hand, is a very cool place. It sits in the middle of a VERY large park, which is heavily used by the locals. It’s a place for them to play games and fly kites, knit and chatter, and eat. We walked through an open arcade that was at least a kilometre long, which was full of people doing all of the above. Well, maybe not kite flying, but everything else at least twice.
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The arcade in the park, Temple of Heaven.
These guys are playing for blood.
Writing with a mop?
These people are playing hacky-sack with a bird-thing.
Finally, we got to the Temple of Heaven. It was about 30C and we had 40 minutes to explore the place, 30 minutes of which were spent in a shady little shop that sold cold soft drinks! The Temple is about 400 years old, and it has been rebuilt umpteen times (people seem to like burning it down). It is the place where the local Flying-Sky-God-People bless the harvest every spring. It seems to work more often than not, as there are 1.4 billion people!
The Temple of Heaven.
Much more popular today – The Snack Bar!
Lunch in the park was in a restaurant in, of all things, a park. The restaurant has a glass wall looking out on a beautiful setting. It was very restful, considering that every place in China sounds like the inside of a turkey barn, what with all the shouting that passes for normal conversation. It had air conditioning (!) and the food was excellent, as usual.
The view of the lake from our restaurant.
A pretty little gazebo beside the lake.
Then we were off to Tiananmen Square. It is the largest square in the world and is rather daunting on a hot afternoon. All of the main access points are via tunnels under the main streets, which have security setups similar to an airport. We got about halfway through a ten-minute wait and found out that the new Chairman was making a surprise visit that afternoon, which meant that we were officially out of luck. Rats. Charley, not to be put off, led us around for a bit until he came up with an almost-crosswalk on a busy six-lane street that was only mildly suicidal and quicker than you can say Mao’s Your Uncle, we were in!
Needless to say, we couldn’t even scratch the surface of the place in an hour, but we got the Cook’s Tour, we rubber-necked, and our feet have officially smooched the square. The place is so big, and so full of buildings and monuments and things, that it’s really hard to get a photo that does it justice. One really cool new thing: they have just finished putting in two 100’ x 12’ high-def digital video screens (outside, at ground level) in the square, and they show travel videos from around China.
Now THAT is a heroic statue.
The People’s Flowerbed. Really cool topiary.
This guy keeps people from stealing the monument.
So far, so good…
Happy tourists.
Then it was on to the Forbidden City. This place is huge, which is why they don’t call it the Forbidden Village or the Forbidden Town, I guess. The towers at the entrance are each the size of a good-sized castle in Europe. Many of the buildings in the public area are accessible, and then there is a private city behind everything where the nomenclatura hung out. We had to walk through that to get to our bus; it was probably a mile or more. Big place. The private area was large enough that when one of the emperors had several squabbling concubines (we’re talking knife-in-the-liver squabbling), he was able to keep them and their retinues in separate parts of the City so that they never saw each other. That big. We toured the enclave of the Dowager Empress, and Charley gave us the lowdown on how a poor-but-beautiful concubine managed to get knocked up by her Emperor, whence she got an immediate promotion, then soon after the Emperor died. Her son was too young to rule, so they made her a Regent. Things kept going her way, and in the end, she ruled China for many years. I can’t even begin to tell you about Chinese history, partly because I don’t know any but mostly because it’s a huge story about a society that is much more byzantine than the Byzantines. Chinese history makes the Europeans look like a bunch of yokels squabbling over a pork chop. I pretty much gave up trying to keep track of who did what to whom and just lay back and enjoyed the ambience. Many of the buildings have been converted into museums and house truly world-class collections of lacquerware, carvings, statuary, etc.
The main public building, where people made obeisance
to the emperor of the day.
It’s good to be the king.
I get the guy riding the chicken, but are those giant squirrels following him or chasing him?
Bronze castings in one of the Dowager Empress’s courtyards.
Someone built a garden out of stone in the back forty.
Probably five acres….
A glimpse of the moat that surrounds the city.
It’s wide enough that small craft warnings apply.
When we finally collected ourselves at the bus, it was late, we were hot, and it was time for dinner. Charley gave us a big warning about hawkers, panhandlers, and pickpockets in this area, as it is a chokepoint and a nice place to pick off gwai lo, but sadly, there were none at home that day. Did I mention that the bus has a beer cooler? Electric, right beside the driver, holds about two dozen beers and water, a buck a bottle. I love this country.
Anyway, dinner was great as usual. We were all hot to explore the hotel pools and spa, but now our feet hurt so much from about ten miles of walking that all we wanted to do is bunk out in preparation for tomorrow. The Wall!