A later start to the day as we had a shorter itinerary, we also had a new guide who just happened to be the husband of our previous guide! Today we headed out to the Temple of Heaven, then for a rickshaw ride around one of the old Beijing hutons.
A new idea…… instead of me providing too much of the background history, of which there is too much to recall correctly and write I’ll post a link so you can read the details yourself if you want! Temple of Heaven
Apart from being a religious place, the area is also a large public park which is very popular with the locals on the weekends for exercising and socialising. Most Beijing residents live in apartments with no access to land, so they flock to the city parks instead.
Above they are playing cards and dominoes, also popular are Chinese checkers and Mahjong.
The main building is the The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, an all wooden structure built with no nails!
The building is supported by 28 massive columns, 4 in an inner circle representing the 4 seasons, further out a ring of 12 representing the months and finally another ring of 12 representing the time periods of the day (evidently in Asia they had 12 time periods each day).
Next was the Circular Mound Altar.
The altar is built atop a 3 tiered structure
The altar is the floor area of the mound, Local people believe it brings good luck to stand on the central stone. Nine is a very lucky number in the Chinese culture, the first circle of stone around the central stone contains nine stones, the next circle 18 up to the 9th circle which has 81. Each set of steps between the three layers consisted of nine steps.
Below the view is looking towards the Beijing sky line. Although the picture doesn’t show it too well, the row of objects in the centre of the picture were used to burn tree bark to scent the air, and on the far right of them is the oven where sacrifices were burnt.
Next we went to one of the Huton districts, huton meaning alleyway. These alleyways lead through a series of houses built around large quadrangles and were usually for the richer people. In more recent times more houses have been built within the quadrangles leading to dense population in some areas. The houses are in great demand though, due to their central location. Continuing our luxury tour, we were driven around on a cycle powered rickshaw!
Even rickshaws can run into traffic jams!
Below is the entrance to a renovated house. In older times this would have been owned by a military officer, shown by the round drum like ornaments on the front step
We had lunch at one of the houses, it was all locally cooked dishes and was very tasty. My only complaint about the food to date is they leave all the bones in. Trying to extract the meat from pieces of chopped up chicken wings (while using chopsticks) is cruel and inhumane punishment for a hungry traveler!
A typical sitting room
Maybe this guy made vases?
View along the hutong
Once back at the hotel we had a rest then headed out to a pedestrian precinct a few blocks away. We also managed to find our first Chinese cache there!