Blogs from Temple of Heaven, Beijing, China, Asia - page 8

So took the subway to chongwenmen and then walked the rest of the way to the temple of heaven, the temple is basically a platform for the emporor to perform sacrafices and offerings to the gods. Around the temple is parklands which have some smaller temples scattered throughout. The whole place is built on the ancient principle that the heavens are round and the earth was square so the bases of the tremple is square and the domes are round, the north of the parklands are semicircular while the south is square, at 1st I wasn't too sure about the place as there were tour groups everywhere and those nnoying people with mega phones but if you wander into the parklands you get away from all that and find really nice woodlands and trees, After spending ... read more

Hutong Tour; A pedicab (bicycle rickshaw) drive through old Chinatown So this is what Hollywood shows us. A rickshaw, tight weaving streets and Chinese people living their lives. We have driven nearly all around Ring 2 today and I can tell you that construction cranes dot the horizon in all directions and awsome large building after large building passes by. There doesn't seem to be an a center to it or an end to it. Rapidly disappearing in all this new growth are the homes clustered along narrow streets called Hutongs. Our tour took us through the Hutong surrounding the Temple of Drums. We visited with a Chinese family who served us tea and our guide Lucy (specific for this portion) translated between us. It was border line culture shock but so interesting that we ... read more

I have decide not to write a blog for every day as i would spend half my time online. Went to see the Temple of Heaven. It was a splendid park to visit. it cost 15RMB to get into the park and35RMB to get into the three large temples inside the park. The buildings were very old as you can imagine and very colourful. I took a few pics which i will get online as soon as. The park was full of old chinese people playing cards, mahjong, singing and dancing. The younger ones were running around with kites and playing what looked like hide and seek and whats the time Mr Wolf. The atmosphere was fun and friendly. The latterns had spakers in them and were playing classic chinese music. Add to the weather ... read more

Today I walked around enjoying the beautiful weather and the spring snow. Everywhere floating in air like snow is this white fuzz from the trees. It’s really like walking around in snow but with the sun shining. With all the good weather you can forget that Beijing is the 28th most polluted city in world. They say living in Beijing is like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Lovely. This weeks pictures are all old people so obviously the pollution is not killing them off to quickly. I now have to lecture every Wednesday last week I talked about China in western news and it was all pollution and piracy. Next week it’s the American housing market. ahhh fun topics. I revisited the Temple of Heaven and they were having some sort of musical ... read more

Difficult to know where to start with this one, really. We'd intended it to be a gentle ramble through the second half of our travels in Australia - sun, sea, scuba-diving, desperately trying not to mention the cricket - but being the lazy sods we are we didn't get around to writing anything before we left the place. And the problem is, even though we've only been in China five minutes, it's been such a gigantic shock to the system that Australia and everything we did there seems a bloody long way away - and not only that, not particularly memorable any more. So if this entry sounds even more lame and ill-conceived than usual, I'll apologise in advance. But the fact is, Beijing is probably the most mind-blowing place we've visited so far. Coming on ... read more