Wednesday, June 6th
We took Bus #116 to the East Gate of the Temple of Heaven Gong Yuan (Park) and bought the full set of entry tickets. Seven years before, when I last came to Beijing, the tickets were not very expensive and it was just one ticket for the entire park. Now, the tickets are more expensive and you need a ticket for each part of the park. Luckily, I was able to get a 20% student discount with a photocopy of my City College ID.
The first thing we saw was a long covered walkway with tons of people sitting along the low borders playing cards and Chinese chess., and knitting small bags or clothes. I took a picture of some people playing poker, but one lady turned around and started shouting at me. Whoops.
We moved on to see the main temple area and heard a click clacking along the way. Mom said this noise was from an old fashioned instrument for something like Chinese rap. Once we entered the Temple of Heaven gates, we avoided many of the tourists and crowds and took some pictures. When we got to the foot of the temple, we saw that they no longer let people into the temple. An additional 10 RMB was required to step inside. They used to let people in the last time I came, but this time, we just looked in from the rails outside. Next, we went into the two diàn (halls) on both sides of the main temple. The west one had an exhibit of certain items in the temple and how they were used. Most of the explanations were in Chinese. The east hall had wooded section models and a full display of architectural drawings with notes on how the temple was built. Not a single metal nail was used in its construction. It was great looking at how the temple was held together by wood joints and notches. I tried sketching, but had to resort to taking a picture instead, because I was in the way of too many people.
Next stop was the Huíīnbì (Echo Wall). This was my favorite part of the Tiantan Gongyuan the last time I came. I wish they had an engineering/architecture exhibit of this, because I’m interested in the physics of how the wall works. When one person talks on one side of the Echo Wall, the second person should be able to hear them from a completely different part of the wall. We walked along the 丹陛桥 (Danbi bridge) past the Dressing Terrace, which turned into a gift shop, and bought some bingguen(r) (popsicle) along the way. When we got to the park around the Echo Wall, we sat on a bench to rest and snacked on something like a cross between a corndog and a fishstick. I also saw some people dancing with long ribbons to their music they played on their own radio. When we got inside the Huiinbi, I saw that they put up fences along the wall, so that people couldn’t get close to the wall to speak. We were quite upset with this, because one needs to be close to the wall in order for the sound to travel effectively. There weren’t that many people – and I wasn’t surprised – the fence really ruined all the fun in visiting the Echo Wall. After one last look, I decided to try something out. I refused to stay disappointed. I climbed up on the fence and got closer to the wall to speak and it worked! My mom went to the other side of the wall (where I wouldn’t be able to hear her normally) and we made up a code, so that we wouldn’t get confused with the other people’s shouts. If one of us says Laolao (Grandma) the other one should respond with Yeye (Grandpa); if one of us says Meimei (little sister), the other one should say Gege (big brother). The funniest part of the code we made up was if one of us said choushidar (literally “stinky poop bag”), the other would say fangpi (fart). We really enjoyed ourselves now that we found a way to reach the wall. People around us started cracking up too. I could even hear the echo of my mother’s laugh. Sometimes we would say random things like fangshaiyou (sunscreen) or chimahu.
South of the 回音壁 (huiinbi) was the Circular Mound Altar. We took a couple of pictures then headed out towards the west side of the park to see the gardens. Along the way, we saw lots of different kinds of birds as well as many people with big-lens cameras trying to snap good shots of the birds. I tried to take some pictures of the birds, but they weren’t that good. We exited the park and took Bus #71 to the west entrance of Qianmendajie. We got off a stop too early, so we had to walk a long way, but it wasn’t so bad. We crossed an overpass and walked through a theater type district with clay figures in glass covered displays along the exterior walls. We arrived at the youmian place around 3pm. The late lunch crowd had already passed so it was just us and two other people. We ate one order of the traditionally prepared youmian and one order of liangmian. It was really tasty and quite filling. Afterwards, we took Bus #23 to Ciqikou, where we transferred to subway Line 5 to take to Hepinglibeijie. To avoid the excessively long subway transfer, we took Bus #104 back to Liufanbeijie, where we walked back home.
~ end of entry 11:20am, June 11th, Living room desk
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