BEIJING 

 TIANANMEN SQUARE AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY 

Two of the most visited places in Beijing must be Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, now known as the Palace Museum, judging from the crowds we met there.

We started our day in Tiananmen Square which houses the Mao Zedong Mausoleum and the Great Hall of the People.  We knew we had a busy day ahead so we agreed to take a pass on the mausoleum but it wasn't open to the public that day anyway.

  

You can see a larger version of any photograph by simply clicking the mouse once on the image. Another click outside the image returns you to the text  

The Mao Zedong Memorial Hall

A view across the Square on a hazy day, the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution in the background

We visited the Great Hall of the People.  This is a very large building indeed, it is 356 metres in length and 206.5 metres in width and 465 metres high at its highest point. The Great Auditorium seats 3,693 in the lower auditorium, 3,515 in the balcony, 2,518 in the gallery and 300 to 500 on the dais. It functions as the meeting place of the National Peoples Congress, their Parliament.  The Great Auditorium is often seen on TV.  Construction was completed over a 10-month period in 1959, which is unbelievable if you see the size of the building.  There are at least 35 beautifully decorated meeting rooms. It turned out that the one thing we really wanted to see, the Great Auditorium, was closed.    Again some of these other rooms are seen on TV when foreign dignitaries sit around making small talk.

The Sichuan Room

 

An impressive hallway

A decorative wall painting

The Shanghai Room   

I think this is the one commonly used for the visit of foreign dignitaries

The Beijing Room

The Forbidden City is on the back wall

Monument to the People's Heroes

Flower decorations in the Square

An enormous basket of flowers

The Forbidden City was the Chinese Imperial Palace from the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) to the end of the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1912). It  now houses the Palace Museum. For almost 500 years, it served as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government. It was built over 14 years starting in 1406 and it required over 100,000 skilled artisans and 1 million workers. It was called the Forbidden City because it was forbidden for commoners or even uninvited nobility to enter its sacred precincts when the Emperors lived there.

Outside the Forbidden City - the Meridian Gate

The Gate of Supreme Harmony

One of the bronze lions - female because she is touching an infant lion with her claw

An Incense Burner

Hall of Supreme Harmony

A male bronze lion - stepping on a ball

Rear of the Hall of Supreme Harmony

Water vessels to fight fires

Stone carved slope

Another Incense Burner

Sundial outside the Hall of Supreme Harmony

And a tortoise

Detail of the roof

Bayonet marks made by soldiers trying to scratch the gold surface of the vat

A painted roof

 

The rear of the Hall of Supreme Harmony

The Hall of Middle Harmony

 

Inside the Hall of Middle Harmony

 

The Hall of Preserving Harmony

 Inside the Hall of Preserving Harmony

Dragon Stone Carving

The Gate of Heavenly Purity

 A gilt bronze lion (female) guarding the Palace of Heavenly Purity

The Palace of Earthly Tranquility

A really large incense burner in the Imperial Garden

 Small Sitting Pavilion in the Imperial Garden

A tower on the corner of the moat - still hazy

The Forbidden City is huge and we only saw a small fraction of the many buildings.  It would take far more than one day to cover it more thoroughly. 

For our evening meal we went to Serve the People, a Thai restaurant.

BEIJING

THE LAMA TEMPLE AND THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN

It was our last full day in Beijing and we visited two more tourist spots, the Lama Temple and the Temple of Heaven.  The Lama Temple also known as the Yonghegong Temple and as the "Palace of Peace and Harmony" the Lama Temple is a temple and monastery of the Geluk School of Tibetan Buddhism.  It is one of the largest and most important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world. The building and the artworks of the temple is a combination of  Han Chinese and Tibetan styles.

Building work on the Yonghegong Temple started in 1694 during the Qing Dynasty.  It originally served as an official residence for court eunuchs. It was then converted into the court of the Prince Yong, a son of the Kangxi Emperor and himself the future Yongzheng Emperor.  After Yongzheng's ascension to the throne in 1722, half of the building was converted into a lamasery, a monastery for monks of Tibetan Buddhism. The other half remained an imperial palace.

Subsequently, the monastery became a residence for large numbers of Tibetan Buddhist monks from Mongolia and Tibet and so the Yonghe Lamasery became the national centre of Lama administration.

You can see a larger version of any photograph by simply clicking the mouse once on the image. Another click outside the image returns you to the text 

Zhaotai Gate is the front gate of Yonghegong Lamasery

Large bell rung when making a wish or prayer

The Drum Tower

A very large bowl

Containing lots of paper money

The West Tablet Pavilion

You know that this is female lion

A incense burner

And this is a male lion (clue is the ball under the foot)

An interesting piece of art

Lighting an incense stick

A large metal prayer wheel

Hall of the Wheel of the Law (Falundian) which is the location for Lamas reading scriptures and holding Buddhist ceremonies.

Two real monks entering Falundian Hall

Detail of the roof

A little scary

The Wanfu Hall

Inside the pavilion is a standing statue of Maitreya, 8m wide, 18m high with 8m buried underground.  The sculpture is carved from a single trunk of sandal wood and has been listed in the Guinness World Records.

The Guinness Book of Records declaration

Some of the decoration on the Wanfu pavilion

We walked through some hutongs on our way to a park where we were going to have a lunch break and on the way we saw another version of a motorized tricycle.

A Chinese rocket and floral decoration in the park

After lunch we took the Metro to the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven is a complex of religious buildings that was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for good harvest.  The temple complex was constructed from 1406 to 1420 during the reign of the Yongle Emperor who was also responsible for the construction of the Forbidden City.  In 1918 it was turned into a Park.

Entrance gate to the Temple of Heaven

 The Imperial Vault of Heaven

The Imperial Vault of Heaven, which was originally built in 1530 and rebuilt 1752. The Imperial Vault of Heaven structure is made from wood and brick with a blue tiled roof that is topped with a gilded ball.
The Imperial Vault of Heaven was used to house the tablet of the God of Heaven and the tablets of the emperors’ ancestors.

 

Stone carving leading up to Imperial Vault

Inside the Imperial Vault of Heaven

 

 The decorated ceiling inside the Vault

 

The Echo Wall at the Vault.  We couldn't get it to work because of all the noise around us

In front of the Imperial Vault of Heaven is the Triple-sound Stone. If one stands on the first stone and speaks toward the hall, the echo can be heard once; if you do the same thing on the second stone, then the echo can be heard twice; and you speak on the third stone three echoes will be heard.  It didn't work for us!

 

The Gates into the Imperial Vault of Heaven

The Gates into the Imper

 Steps leading to the Circular Mound Altar which was used for offering sacrifices to the Heaven

The Gate at the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, the central entry was exclusively used by the God of Heaven, the east one for the Son of Heaven (the emperor), and the west one was for the court officials

 The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests

Flower decorated globe with tourist

In our research we had read that the Temple of Heaven was a great place for recreation of the Chinese visitors.  It so proved to be the case as these little videos will attest.  

Click on the arrow bottom left to play these short Quicktime Movies.

You may find that they do not play on a tablet.

An impromptu choir singing in the wind

Elegant Dancers

A Musical Light

A Beautiful Singer

Perhaps the most amusing sign to be seen, by men only

We left the Temple of Heaven which we really enjoyed and went to Silk Street.  This used to be a street market but has been moved into a tall glass building.  Known for 1700 little stores that sell knock offs of all the famous brands,  you get hustled by very aggressive sales people and it wasn't a very nice visit.  We didn't feel inclined to buy anything. Frankly very disappointing.

For our last evening meal we went to the Taj Pavilion considered to be the best Indian Restaurant in Beijing and we had a very nice relaxed meal.  It was very hard to find and that's a problem when you don't speak Mandarin and nobody you can find speaks English.

Next day we finished our packing and took a taxi out to the airport to catch a United Airlines flight to San Francisco, connecting to Vancouver and then on to Comox where we arrived just as the weather broke.  In addition, we each brought home a cold.

The United flight was OK but we were surprised by the age of most of the flight attendants.  Most looked ready for retirement and one looked as if she was past her best buy date.  She looked like anybody's granny with grey hair and a bun.  I guess that's what you get with a three star airline.  The plan was serviceable but a little old, it was delivered in 1998. 

We had great time away seeing lots of interesting things.  Quite memorable.