BEIJING: DAY 4 The Temple of Heaven and a little non-shopping.

Day Four began with my getting checked out of the hotel, though Michael was a little late.  We made it to the Temple of Heaven with a couple of hours to spend there.   The Chinese have always worshiped the heavens.  Perhaps an indication of their fascination could be seen in the instruments they developed for tracking the elements in the night sky back before Shakespeare and Columbus. We saw a replica of  a 12th or 13th century instrument for measuring the stars at the SheShan Observatory.

The Temple of Heaven was constructed in the 1400s and was used by emperors to pray for good harvests.  Apparently, monarchs had been praying to heaven for good harvests long before this temple was built.  The museums on the ground show early versions of temples used for praying.   This temple was used by emperors of the Qing and Ming dynasties.  Wikipedia tells me that it is seen as a Daoist temple.   As you can see it's a magnificent building, but the inside is open and plain, with an altar and little else. 

On the grounds are two other buildings, which hold various displays relating to the history and the process that the emperors followed, their ritual, in preparing for the prayer for good harvest.   I took photos of each of the steps, but there were so many, I won't include them here.  (They were also behind glass, so the reflection makes for difficult reading.

People crowded around to couple of doorways into the temple, so I had to wait my turn to take my look and shoot a few pictures.    Here is the temple on the inside.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

             

From the temple, we can look down onto a courtyard.

And here are the grounds surrounding the temple.

The museum showed some models of earlier temples and some illustrations. The earliest ones being simply a raised platform.   

 

 The above is a photo of Japanese forces taking over the temple during WW II.

This is a photograph of a photograph in the museum, obviously taken with enough light to show the details that my shots could not.

When we left the Temple of Heaven, we went to eat lunch at the Great Wall Restaurant, which is in Beijing, not the Great Wall.  I was told the restaurant was part of the first Western hotel, which was called the Great Wall Sheraton (I think), in downtown Beijing.

 Michael (on our left) ordered lunch, which consisted of something like Hunan chicken without the hot spice, yam noodles with two kinds of pork, spicy zucchini, eggs scrambled with tomatoes, rice, and beer.   Qi, our driver (on the right), says he has to have hot spicy food.  And I'm "bu la da"..no spice, please.

 From lunch we drove to a section that Michael says was a radio manufacturing company until recently, when it was disbanded and turned into an art warehouse area.

  

 These look like calligraphy that says something, but  I don't think they do.

After an hour and a half walking through the stores and the displays, we headed for the airport, and I caught my flight to Shanghai.

 Here's the airport.

Arriving in Shanghai.   The weather is cool.  Comfortable.


I decided to take a taxi  because I thought it'd be faster than the metro.
I found the taxi line, and it looked short, but as I walked along the line,as it moved forward, it turned a corner, and I saw that it was four lines deep, and I could not tell how long each line was as it extended out of sight behind a wall before it started weaving back and forth.   After about 40 minutes or more, I got to a taxi--this was steady walking.  I wondered where all the taxis were coming form.  I counted about a thousand steps in the queue.  Were there a thousand of us in line?

Back in Shanghai.