BEIJING, CHINA
Another day of sightseeing. Karine and I caught a bus this morning to the Temple of Heaven, which is really a large park with several temple buildings onsite. As it's National Day, there were a good number of tourists there besides ourselves, some carrying little Chinese flags, but it wasn't nearly as crowded as I thought it might be.
The largest and most interesting temple structure there was the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, built in 1420. It's a tall round wooden pagoda elaborately painted in blue, red, green, and gold designs, supposedly built without the use of nails. A couple of surrounding buildings featured exhibits explaining the complicated rituals emperors would conduct to ensure a good harvest for the coming year. We then walked along a long stone causeway to the Imperial Vault of Heaven, a temple with astrological significance that sits within a round wall known as Echo Wall for its strange acoustics. A little further on we came to the Round Altar, built in 1530. It's composed of three concentric tiers of white marble, each consisting of blocks in multiples of nine (according to Chinese tradition, odd numbers are the most favorable, and nine is the best of all, since it's the largest single-digit odd number). We then wandered through some of the park's gardens. Oddly enough, I didn't see a single bloom in the Garden of 1000 Flowers, but the rose garden was magnificent.
After returning to Jin's neighborhood, Karine and I decided to go to the supermarket and buy food for dinner rather than going out. She ambitiously bought a bunch of vegetables to make a salad, while somehow I ended up with just a baguette and some yogurt, so I supplemented that with a turkey sub from Subway (hey, it was buy one, get one free). Jin stayed the night at Christian's, leaving his two guests to fend for themselves, but that was fine. We stayed in and watched a pirated DVD of The Devil Wears Prada (don't bother).
Another day of sightseeing. Karine and I caught a bus this morning to the Temple of Heaven, which is really a large park with several temple buildings onsite. As it's National Day, there were a good number of tourists there besides ourselves, some carrying little Chinese flags, but it wasn't nearly as crowded as I thought it might be.
The largest and most interesting temple structure there was the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, built in 1420. It's a tall round wooden pagoda elaborately painted in blue, red, green, and gold designs, supposedly built without the use of nails. A couple of surrounding buildings featured exhibits explaining the complicated rituals emperors would conduct to ensure a good harvest for the coming year. We then walked along a long stone causeway to the Imperial Vault of Heaven, a temple with astrological significance that sits within a round wall known as Echo Wall for its strange acoustics. A little further on we came to the Round Altar, built in 1530. It's composed of three concentric tiers of white marble, each consisting of blocks in multiples of nine (according to Chinese tradition, odd numbers are the most favorable, and nine is the best of all, since it's the largest single-digit odd number). We then wandered through some of the park's gardens. Oddly enough, I didn't see a single bloom in the Garden of 1000 Flowers, but the rose garden was magnificent.
After returning to Jin's neighborhood, Karine and I decided to go to the supermarket and buy food for dinner rather than going out. She ambitiously bought a bunch of vegetables to make a salad, while somehow I ended up with just a baguette and some yogurt, so I supplemented that with a turkey sub from Subway (hey, it was buy one, get one free). Jin stayed the night at Christian's, leaving his two guests to fend for themselves, but that was fine. We stayed in and watched a pirated DVD of The Devil Wears Prada (don't bother).
posted by John Kuge at 10:20 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home