Heavenly Temple

Beijing, July 7
Tian Tan Day, a trip to the Temple of Heaven, parts of it anyway.
My host told me this particular site is about half an hour walk from my hotel. As usual she was right. It was a reasonable walk considering the temperature and the blazing sun today. A blazing sun in Beijing is a good thing, it means the air is relatively clean.
Towards the end of the walk, as I got to the intersection of Qian Men and Zhushikou I found I could not get there from here. I could see where I wanted to go but I could not walk directly from where I was to where I needed to be. (That happens fairly regularly and unpredictably here.) There was construction which completely blocked the sidewalk for several dozen metres. There was no way to get passed it directly without walking into traffic. I had to go in the wrong direction along Zhushikou a little, use a raised pedestrian walkway and then figure out how to get back to Qian Men so I could cross over it and continue to Tian Tan. Either the streets had moved a little or the the scale of my map does not allow the amount of detail I required but I did not find exactly how to get where I was going. But I was not on a schedule and I knew what direction I had to go so I followed the traffic and found my way.
On my way back to the hotel I discovered I could not cross Zhushikou from south to north. There was a barrier separating east and west bound traffic. I decided not to run across five lanes, jump a barrier and then run across another five lanes. Again there was an elevated pedestrian walkway provided. Again it required I walk east for a little while in order to cross over and then walk west back to Qian Men.

If you come to Beijing, visit this park and historical site. First it resembles the North American idea of a park more than the other historical sites I have seen. It has lots of grass and other low growing green stuff. It has thousands of trees, mostly cypress and pine, but many other types. You cannot and should not walk on the grass. Like me, you will be a guest here, so follow the rules. It has flower gardens. There is a wonderful collection of roses that were nearly finished flowering in early July (unfortunately for me). China is the home of the tea rose, one of the main parents of modern Hybrid Tea roses, sold to millions of people every year in North America. The entry fee is Y30 and there are some special parts of Tian Tan that each require another Y20 to enter. I stayed within the "basic" part of the park.
More than the other areas I have visited, Tian Tan felt to me like a family or community park that happened to have historical monuments in it. Before I get to that, I remind you what I said about The Egg: the Beijing City government likes to do things on a grand scale. That was even more true when there were emperors in Beijing. The Temple of Heaven was the centre of worship for the entire country. People believed that what the emperor did here determined harvests and prosperity for the entire empire. So it was a very important place. (If you rent the audio guide when you come you will hear some of the stories.) Because it was so important emperors would add, renovate, rebuild parts of it from time to time. The current Tian Tan park is four times the area of the Forbidden City. When the audio guide said that I thought my legs would fall off. However most of the space is open, very little has buildings on it. The various worship spaces are extremely impressive, and built on the same "bigger is better" principle that rules in the Forbidden Palace. While you are always aware of those buildings they do not dominate, I found it easy to relax and wander, no pressure to make sure I had seen everything there was to see.

I think because of this relaxed atmosphere, which is greatly aided by the cypresses and other trees, the park seems to be the home of many amateur performing groups. People get together to practice (perhaps) or show off (perhaps) or just to enjoy various minority folk dances and songs as well as various groups of the dominant Han sharing their songs with the open air and anyone in ear shot. By the way I assume these were all amateur groups, but it is possible some were paid to show up and perform. I saw line dancing for fun and exercise, folk dancing and singing, dance groups practicing routines. I heard Peking Opera in several places, I heard what looked like a spontaneous group singing either folk songs or revolutionary songs. I saw middle-aged women dancing with multi-coloured ribbons and enjoying themselves immensely. I think I would visit this park a lot if I lived here and lived close enough to it to visit.
After more than three hours wandering around on concrete and stone I decided to go back to the hotel area for some lunch and some air conditioning.