The Temple of Heaven - Marc goes Traveling

The Temple of Heaven

2006-09-29

It's been a little while since a visit to an official Chinese monument of some sort, and since today was such a nice day out (sunny, 27C), it was the perfect opportunity to rectumify that problem.

Today's destination: The Temple of Heaven (Tiantan, 天坛). It's an awful lot like all the other temples and palaces and halls and pagodas and pavillions we've been so far, except that it's different, so you have to visit it. D'oh!

The bicycle ride there was actually quite pleasant, and on the way back, we tried out lunch at some random new restaurant we had never seen before. It was some sort of roll-your-own-stew place or something, and I think I got picked up by the (male) waiter, who was looking for a foreign language partner/friend.

[Click on any photo for a larger view]

BEHOLD THE AMAZING ENTRANCE TO THE PARKING LOT IN ALL ITS HISTORICAL GLORY!!!	Uuuh, this is the ticket booth. It's also teh awesome. Costs like 15RMB to get in.	The park is quite nice, with lots of tree-lined walks. At the end of this walk is the "Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest".
	Here's a map if you get lost looking at all the pictures.	You see a lot of people with these weird circles on their back. Are they scars? Are they some form of medicine? Dunno!!!!
Pretty flowers today!	This is the "Long Corridor" (It's quite long, you see). Some 350m long and 5m wide.
		There are tonnes of locals hanging around, playing cards, making music and singing traditional operas, and otherwise enjoying the great weather.
		This is the ramp up to the Hall ...
Strike a pose!	Cute kid.
	The building has three layers, one for the common folk, one for upper class folk, and one for the emporer, who would come to pray here.
This lamp-thingie was playing soothing flute music as well.
		Hordes of people all crowd around to see what's inside ... ready for it .... ? :
It's a little anti-climactic.		More cute kids.
This one was throwing a tantrum because mommy was taking a photo of the other girl.		GIRL!
This is right before I dropped my lens and cracked the protector on it.	Fortunately, everything is okay, and I just need to get somebody to take the protector off now ... phew!
This is a huge bridge/ramp thing. The emporer thought the stairs up to the temple were too stressful, so they built a km long ramp to walk up. Go figure.	Lots of pretty green grass here!
	I'll call this the HALL OF GLORIOUS SOUVENIR HARMONY.	Or the "Dressing Terrace". Boooooooring!
Looking back up the bridge/ramp.	This is another building on the campus. Can't actually go in this one, though !!	And finally at the large round raised altar, which all of these temple complexes seem to have.
It's supposed to be good luck or something to stand on it. Or at least have tacky tourist photos taken on top!
	Oooh, baby!	Sprinklers!!!!!
	There's a really pretty rose garden here, and you can totally smell the roses in the air.	Unfortunately, about 30 seconds later, you can smell the liquid bug killer spray they're using to hose down all the trees in the park.
Orange Roses! w000t!