8 Days in Beijing - Day 2 (part 2)

Travel date: 13.12.2013

Day 1 click HERE

Day 2 (part 1) click HERE

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DAY 2 highlights (part 2) -

Temple of Heaven 天坛 and 
Golden Mask Dynasty Performance 金面王朝表演

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Reluctantly, I left the palace together with everyone else.  Below pics taken while we walked to our coach.  Looking into the palace from the outside, it was another magical feel.

Lunch at Bian Yi Fang, specialised in Peking Roast Duck.

Sweet sauce, shredded spring onions and cucumber strips for Peking Duck.

Meat and skin were sliced thinly, together.

It tasted good, but I preferred Singapore's Peking Duck meticulously prepared with skin and meat served separately.

Other dishes we had.

After fully charged with food, we proceeded to another  historical royal place of interest -

Tian Tan 天坛
(Temple of Heaven)
The temple grounds cover 2.73km², built since 1420, a place where emperors of Ming and Qing dynasties offer their prayers for rain and harvest.  There are 3 major buildings in Tian Tan 天坛 namely: Yuan Qiu 圜丘, Huang Wan Yu 皇弯宇 and Qi Nian Dian 祈年殿.

Entrance to Tian Tan

Walk and walk and walk and walk......

Yuan Qiu 圜丘
3 tiers of circular platform in 5.17m height, lowest tier 52.92m diameter, top tier 23.65m diameter.  9 flights of stairs to each tier and 9 flooring tiles from the middle of the platform spreads in multiples of 9;  ie. 1st ring 9 tiles, 2nd ring 18 and so on.  Centre of the platform is a big round slate called Heart of Heaven where the emperors would stood to pray for favourable weather.  We were busy standing on it shouting to hear our own echo and totally forgotten to take photo of this Heart of Heaven >.<

View from the top, see how far the entrance was?

Walking down from Yuan Qiu, heading to Huang Wan Yu.

Huang Wan Yu皇弯宇
(The Imperial Vault of Heaven)
Temple 19.5m height and 15.6m diameter.  A round wall of  3.72m height surrounding this temple called 回音壁 (direct translation echo wall).  It was said that if one talked facing closely the wall, the other person putting her ear onto the wall many meters away could hear it as clearly as a telephone!  However, this circular wall is being fenced up to prevent vandalising, quite a pity that we couldn't try and hear it ourselves.

The dome shaped ceiling with very complicated artwork.

After Huang Wan Yu the tour guide lead us to a small garden introducing this 500 years old tree to us -
九龙柏 Nine Dragon Juniper

It was said that the vertical spiral grooves on the tree trunk looked like 9 coiling dragons wreathing up to the sky.  I looked up down left right, the "dragons" no head no tail, lolxx......  Who's good imagination arh??

Walking through this gate we saw the last, which is also the largest temple faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from us T_____________T

Verdict:  Our ancient emperors loves spaciousness, but they never know today, we walked until legs turned jelly sia.

Braced ourselves up, 跑吧!

Qi Nian Dian 祈年殿
(The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests)
Temple 39m height and 36m diameter, built on 3 levels of marble.  The building is completely wooden with no nails.  In 1889, lightning struck the building and it was destroyed by fire.  The building we are seeing now was re-build several years after this unfortunate incident.

There's a mini museum, most importantly, it's warm inside lolxx...

Shelter passage way leading us out.

It was crowded and lively with many locals entertaining themselves all sorts of activities.... chess games, folk dancing, knitting, rope skipping, kicking feather shuttles 毽子.   Singaporeans just emerged ourselves in shopping malls, not sure if it's a good thing or bad.

We strolled through the park to the exit.  Scenery was lovely along the way, family bonding warmed my heart despite of the chilly weather at 2 to 5 degree.  Many big fat 麻雀 Eurasian Tree Sparrows hopping around.  They were double the size of what we saw in Singapore.

Lovely churps from big pluffy 喜雀 European Magpies bid us good bye.

Happiness is simple.

Made it back to the coach at last.  Not sure how many km we had walked, not sure where I gotten these Hello Kitty socks either.


With some time spared, the tour guide dropped us for some shopping!  It's a non-tourist area and I got no idea where we were lolxx....

We bought tibits, 香飘飘 milk tea, 海底捞 soup base paste etc... the only regret was not buying more!

Accessory shop outside the supermarket, not the cheapest but cheaper than Singapore can liao.

Bought face masks and ear puffs.

After shopping we proceed to the theatre at around 5pm for Golden Mask Dynasty Performance 金面王朝表演.  It's HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and you are about to find out why.

The performance is a combination of ballet and gymnastics, glorious costumes and really stunning stage effects with a romantic story outline.

No photograph or video allowed, but it's worth a risk for this "illegal" pic.

In the story, the place was flooded with natural disaster.  They LITERALLY brought the flood onto the stage!!  Dropped jaw.  It's INCREDIBLE!  Even the 2 sides of the theatre got water splashing down.  The amount of water was so much that you could hear them roaring!  After the "flood", the stage was dry again for another scene!

Dinner, quite yummy, but I was craving for western or jap.

After dinner we made a brief stop at  世贸天街.  It's simply called The Place in english.
Behold the largest Led Screen in Asia, 250m length 30m wide.  It's quite an eye opening.

image from news.hsw.cn

My pic is lousy, couldn't capture a good view unless I run across the road to the other side.

Finally done with Day 2, stay tuned for Day 3!