Yonghe Gong, Temple of Confucius, Relaxing June 19th 2010 Today was our first group field trip. We went to Yonghe Gong (雍和宮) which was a palace that the Qianlong emperor then had converted into a monastery. A lot of Buddhists from Mongolia and Tibet met here. Qianlong had statues and stuff of his ancestors in the palace and then entrusted them to the monks which was a symbolic gesture that did a lot to incorporate people from Mongolia and Tibet ... read more
Asia » China » Beijing For centuries China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. A... ... read more
I'm studying Chinese at Beijing Language and Culture University (北京语言大学)for two months and living with a host family in Beijing. Then I plan to go to Wuhan to do atomic physics research at the Wuhan Institute for Physics and Mathematics (武汉物理与数学研究所). In between I hope to do some traveling around China!... full info