Beijing- The Temple of Heaven

The Temple of Heaven is located within Tiantan Park, a large park in southern Beijing surrounded by pine woods. This park is a popular spot for elderly Beijingers. They come here in the morning to do Tai Chi in large groups, and in the afternoon and evening they play Mahjong, sing, socialize, and play traditional Chinese instruments.

The Temple of Heaven was built in 1420 to symbolize the relationship between heaven and earth, and the role that the Emperors played within that relationship. The dominant feature is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, a large circular palace with three layers of eaves. The three layers represent heaven, earth, and everything on earth. The architecture is very symbolic, with everything from the shape of outer and inner walls to the number of pillars bearing significant symbolism. The base of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is made up of three layered terraces made of white marble pillars standing a total of 6 meters tall. On the day of winter solstice every year, the Emperor would go to the palace and offer a sacrifice to heaven.

The symbolism of the architecture astounded me. It seemed that no detail was unplanned, no matter how small. Each marble pillar was intricately carved, and the richness of the reds, golds, and blues made the Temple of Heaven beautiful, but also made it feel like a special, sacred place.

Part of the Temple of Heaven has a cool feature. Circular walls feature prominently in the architecture of the Temple, and one particular place called the "Echo Wall" allows two people standing opposite each other along the wall to talk into the wall and be able to hear each other. Legend has it that this unique feature of the Echo Wall was discovered accidentally when an Emperor's private conversation was overheard by a servant, to fatal consequences. I mistakenly thought that the Echo Wall would echo my own voice all the way around, but I discovered the hard way that yelling into the wall only made everybody turn and stare.

An interesting sidenote: there were hordes of tourists at the Temple of Heaven when we were there and we met a very friendly (retired) Dutch couple who had driven their caravan all the way to Beijing from their home in Holland. Now that's traveling!

As soon as we left the Temple of Heaven, the serenity we had enjoyed inside was shattered by the swarms of vendors that met us outside the gates. They were selling the usual stuff- postcards, picture books, and little trinkets and souvenirs. Fortunately, Wally had armed us with a couple of phrases to help ward off these types of people (this definitely wouldn't be the last of them)- boo-shie, which means "no thanks", and boo-yao, which means "I already have". The trouble is, even when you genuinely are not interested in what they have, they drop their prices so quickly that you can hardly keep refusing! That's how Caroline ended up with a beautiful book about Beijing (for a total of about $3).

Walking through the Temple of Heaven had worked up our appetites, and fortunately the restaurant we were eating at was just around the corner. We had a delicious meal at a huge four-storey Dai restaurant (Dai is a southern Chinese culture), all the while being entertained by some rather dainty male and female traditional dancers on the stage in the restaurant. After dinner it was off to the Chinese opera.