Temple Day
This was the official end of the trip - some people were flying out in the morning, others in the afternoon, a few were staying on. I was too lazy to deal with moving to a hostel, so I paid $70 to spend an extra night in the hotel.
In the morning I went with Gerald and Margaret to the Temple of Heaven, which is the temple used by the Emperor in all religious and ceremonial rites. It is located directly south of the Forbidden City.
Unfortunately, the main building and mound were under renovations. Fortunately, this didn’t affect our enjoyment of the park and temple at all.
The temple is surrounded by tons of lush green space - flower gardens, small forests, fields and patches of grass. It’s also very shady, and a popular retreat for Beijingers. We saw lots of people out getting their exercise, sitting with friends and gossiping in the shade, people singing, families out getting their ‘Little Emperors’ to have some much-needed exercise… although there were several sites to see in the tempe, most of these people were content to spend their time in the park.
One benefit of the Temple of Heaven was that I was finally the Centre of the Universe. One of the mounds has a smoothly worn spot that was believed, by the Chinese, to be the Centre of the Universe. It was fun to see Chinese tourists push each other to have their photos taken while standing on this spot.
We hopped in a cab and headed to the Lama Temple, located to the north. One of the main attractions here was the 26m tall sandalwood Buddha, carved from one piece of wood. There were 18m above ground, and there are 8m descending into the basement. Our theory is that they built the temple up around the carving - it’s definitely not the kind of thing to move around.
The Lama Temple itself was quite well preserved. Apparently it only survived the Cultural Revolution with the protection of Zhou Enlai. It was definitely the least-dusty temple I had been to in China - interestingly, it was still active. There were lots of people purchasing or simply entering with stacks of incense that they would then place in front of every Buddha statue in the place. If one was paying tribute to all the Buddhas, it would take hours and a few hundred sticks of incense to get through it!
In the interests of preservation, as well, there is no incense permitted to be burnt inside the temple. All of the incense is burnt outside. There are also tons of fire stations set up - definitely impressive. If the incense was burnt in the temple buildings, visiting would have been unbearable. Due to the popularity of the temple, the smoke of the incense hung heavily in the air as it was!
We headed back to the subway, and got on the line to head back towards Wangfujing and our part of town. I decided to split up with the two, and headed back to the Silk Market. I picked up a USB microdrive for my sister, a blue cashmere sweater ($40 Cdn), a wheelie duffel bag, some tacky souvenirs… I also went out and picked up some DVD’s. Lots of hard bargaining!
Just after I picked up the luggage (North Face, apparently), I heard an Australian voice go “there she is!” Margaret and Gerald had gotten fed up with Wangfujing and had decided to return to the Silk Market in search of Raise the Red Lantern, a movie filmed in the Wang family house we had visited near Pingyao.
I returned with them to the hotel, then Gerald and I later accompanied Margaret to the bus station where she would catch the airport shuttle. The directions we had received were sketchy, including the fact that the Beijing International Hotel was right down the road from the Bejing Hotel. After seeing the spot, confirming that the price was only 16 yuan and confirming the time, we felt a lot less apprehensive about using the shuttle bus.
Gerald and I went to a giant bookstore - one of the largest, if not the largest, in China before splitting up. He headed up to Wangfujing to check his email, while I had to worry about packing! My new bag was the perfect size for carryon… I would put the majority of my purchases in there.
Goal is to get a good night’s sleep so that I don’t have another sleepless night in the ANA Hotel Narita. I also need to mentally prepare myself for the interminable line that defines Japanese immigration!
