Year of the Yat: Beijing Day 3 - Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace and Lama Temple

Day 3 in Beijing was packed: 3 sites to see! Here is the Temple of Heaven from a distance. It was where the emperor went to worship for a good harvest between 1420 and 1914 (or so). It's a big park, and lots of locals spend time there in the morning.

One of the exercises that people were doing was a "game" with a racket and a ball. The moves they were doing - spinning, flipping, etc., were pretty impressive. It was MUCH harder than it looked.

Tiffany worked it out a little better than I did!

Then, we rocked out some Tai Chi

With one seriously awesome Tai Chi master

Check out Tiffany following those moves

By this point, she was pretty much leading the group

And then . . . a little hackeysack!

Looks like we made it!

As usual, the building was ornate and beautiful

Inside the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest

Here are the side buildings

Sometimes without a picture showing the perspective, it's hard to imagine how HUGE these places are

BIG TIME!

Some of the trees in the park were marked as between 300 and 600 years old.

The Temple of Heaven was constructed completely without nails

After the Temple of Heaven, we stopped for a hotpot lunch. What you see in front of us is the hotpot, which is split between a curry sauce and a hot sauce. It's kind of like the Melting Pot, except with asian foods. REALLY tasty.

What's that sign say? OH STARBUCKS!

Entrance to Starbucks - just kidding . . . pretty door at the Summer Palace! The Summer Palace was built in the 1100s, after the capital was moved to Beijing, as a place for the emperor to go during the . . . summers. It was most heavily used by the only female "empress" known as the Dragon Lady. She was one tough cookie and ruled by having very young emperors appointed that she could control.

Here is the North Gate of the Summer Palace

Here is an old chair used by the emperor to travel

And an open sedan chair here (up to 16 men would hold the rails).

The first electric lights in China!!!!!1

Here is an old man practicing his caligraphy in the park. Very pretty!

Uh oh! Who was the girl who the man handed the caligraphy brush to?

Learning how to write "Heart"

After Tiffany's caligraphy lesson, we tried these candied treats - which I think were crab apples. (If you don't know, we have crab apples in the States too, but typically do not eat them because they are so sour.)

the Summer Palace is on the water

Here is where the Dragon Lady "imprisoned" the emperor. It was a courtyard surrounded with smaller buildings.

I was not kidding about "imprisoned" - here is a brick wall that was built just inches behind a glass door.

A bricked up wall and doorway.

You can really see how this used to be a beautiful building that was open . . . not after the Dragon Lady!

The Summer Palace had some of the most detailed work in the buildings we had seen thus far. Here are a few paintings just on the ceiling beams.

Nice Lantern!

The Emperor's phone . . . installed in 1904 or so

The water was really pretty

The summer palace from the water

One of the emperor's built this Long Corridor for his mother, so she could enjoy the outside even when it was hot or raining, etc. It is 780 METERS LONG! Seriously. Long. Corridor.

Working it!

Summer Palace boats

This one is a marble boat - it hasn't ever left the harbor

Before our boat ride! (It was a whole $1.25 for the trip!)

And then we headed to Lama Temple! pretty entrance

The first of several 'layers' of the temple.

We've seen a LOT of Buddhas in our 2 months in Asia

the innermost temple

Here's the boutique hotel we stayed it. It was a traditional courtyard house that was converted to a hotel by the owner. All the rooms were very nice and located off of this courtyard