Sunday April 24th

After a reasonable night’s sleep, we awoke fairly early, as soon as it was light around 6am.  The funniest thing last night was that Marie and Geri had gone to brush their teeth and forgotten which compartment they were in, and ended up knocking on 3 or 4 doors before they got it right...!

Everyone else slowly awoke and got dressed fairly early.  About 7pm we were passing some quite impressive mountains which Jane told me were “The West Mountains” which we would be going through when we go to the Great Wall.

By 8:15am we were in Beijing and we were out of the station and on the bus by 8:30am.  Jane told us that our hotel had promised our rooms would be ready by 10am.  In the meantime, we went to a different hotel (?!) to have breakfast.  At 9:50am we were on our way to our last hotel, and our new local guide Joy was telling us what we would be doing today and over the next few days.  After lunch, we would be visiting the Temple of Heaven.

Temple of Heaven

We arrived at our hotel and collected our luggage which was fine.  We then discovered that our rooms weren’t ready at all, so we left our luggage with concierge and visited the Temple of Heaven before lunch.  Back on the bus, we went to the Temple of Heaven, the grounds of which is now a ‘People’s Park’.  The buildings are manned as these are the tourist attractions of course, but local people can buy a yearly park pass which gets them entry into any park, but they would have to pay to go into any of the buildings here, and for over 65s the pass is free.

Temple of Heaven

Completed during the Ming Dynasty, the Temple of Heaven is also known as Tian Tan (Altar of Heaven), and is one of the largest Temple complexes in China.  The Emperor would come here to pray to heaven and his ancestors, and to make sacrifices at winter solstice.  We went through the first gate to the Circular Mound Altar (built in 1530 in the 9^th year of the Ming Dynasty Emperor Jianjing’s reign).  It was used to worship heaven at the winter solstice and each flight of steps has 9 steps (the most heavenly and imperial number which also sounds similar to the word meaning longevity) and everything else was calculated to be multiples of 9.  All the steps were made of marble here throughout and were remarkably clean and smooth.

We then went through another gate to The Imperial Vault of Heaven which was built in 1530 as the Circular Mound was.  The roof was conical and the roof tiles of a vivid blue glaze.  The colour of the roof and the outside of the building was amazing!  It was flanked by a hall on either side, with similar decoration on the exterior, and were originally used to hold the divine tablets of the gods, as was the Vault itself.

Temple of Heaven

We then continued on through another gate, along a long causeway, through another gate where we came upon the Gate of the Prayer for Good Harvests which was not only the last gate before the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, but was the most ornate gate of them all.  Through this was the final building, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, in a similar architectural style, as the previous Imperial Vault of Heaven.  This was flanked on either side by a hall in which were small Museum exhibitions with artefacts such as bronze containers for grain.  Here we also learnt that the dragon and phoenix motifs which were everywhere on and inside the buildings, represent the Emperor and the Empress, and together represent longevity.  We also saw here that as Heaven is seen as round and the Earth square, the buildings here are all round within square courtyards.

Temple of Heaven

We then walked through the park and got on the bus for lunch.  I ate a dish here which was quite peppery, but seemed okay at the time, but later turned out to aggravate my slightly dry throat to a red raw sore throat which was painful on every swallow!  Good job we were eating western food this evening!

We finally got into our hotel rooms and it was nice to know we could finally pack our suitcases properly.  It had just been annoying having to lug around food for train journeys and carry all liquid around in our carry on luggage and I had all my souvenirs on me too.

Mathew and I dozed and then showered before heading out to dinner which was “ma-ma wu-wu” (so-so).  The first western meal we had earlier in the trip was better, and that was cooked by a French chef.  This was obviously Chinese trying to cook western food...!

Temple of Heaven

The Caesar salad was basically half a lettuce drowned in half a bottle of Caesar dressing and greasy croutons.  TOO MUCH!!  For the main course, I decided on “Pan fried fish fillet with chips”.  The chips were nice, but only just warm, while I discovered “Pan fried” actually means “deep fried battered fish” which was really greasy.  TOO MUCH!!  Dessert was a “selection of French pastries” which actually came in the form of minute slices of plain vanilla sponge cake, lemon cake, and raspberry cake.  NOT ENOUGH! Haha!

So no pastries then...!  It was an odd meal (as most, if not all of us thought so!) and we went straight back to the hotel for a rest.  I tried some Green tea for my throat but nothing was happening there.  If anything, sipping sprite seemed to help!  I wrote my journal and sorted out my suitcase and other bags before we went to bed.

Tomorrow we will be visiting Tian’an Men Square  and the Forbidden City in the morning, and a Lama Temple in the afternoon.  I just hoped my throat would be okay tomorrow!