Temple of Heaven in Beijing

As we were staying in Beijing we wanted to visit many famous places. Unfortunately we had to choose few only among loads of sites which are worth to see over there. We picked The Temple of Heaven (天坛). In order to get there we took a subway from our hotel. We often took a subway in Beijing as there is huge traffic.

This complex of Taoist buildings was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for good harvest.

In order to get to the Temple of Heaven the ticket needs to be bought. More over to see all buildings in the complex 3 tickets are required or one, more expensive, for all the places there.

Anyway the Temple consists of three main groups of constructions and it is surrounded by a park. In this beautiful park there are a lot of people hanging out. It is so nice to see people despite of their age exercising, dancing or playing Jiànzi 毽子 (kicking shuttlecock - picture on the right). I have never seen that in Poland or Ireland on that scale:)

The Temple of Heaven from the North side

The main building is The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (祈年殿). It is a circular building, built on three levels of marble stone base, where the Emperor prayed for good harvests. The building is completely wooden, with no nails. It is very impressive. It looked for me like floating in the air.

The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests

The Imperial Vault of Heaven (皇穹宇) is surrounded by a smooth circular wall, the Echo Wall, that can transmit sounds over large distances. We checked that and it really works. You can hear clearly a person from the opposite part of the wall. It was very exciting!

The Echo Wall in the background

Forbidden City in Beijing

The Forbidden City in Beijing was the most impressing site I have ever seen in my life. It is vast and beautiful, and well preserved. I am not surprised that Emperors lived there. The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dyansty. It was the home of the Emperor and his household and the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government.

The palace which was built in XV century covers 720,000 square meters. It is surrounded by high city wall and a wide moat. The wall is pierced by gates on each side. To the south, there is the most famous gate called Tiananmen Gate, which is decorated with a portrait of Mao Zedong in the centre and two placards to the left and right: "Long Live the People's Republic of China" and "Long live the Great Unity of the World's Peoples". The Tiananmen Gate connects the Forbidden City precinct with well-known Tiananmen Square.

Tiananmen Sq in Beijing

We began our visiting from the Tiananmen Sq like many other tourists. We passed many gates, halls and even gardens inside the museum. Many of them names I don’t remember but there is a handy way to know them all when you are over there. You can rent a small device, a guide, for only 40 Yuen. They have this guide even in Polish which was a huge surprise for me.

Anyway, if you want to see ALL in there prepare yourself to spend all day on this visit. We had been there only a half day and we had to choose places where we want to go. For example I really wanted to see an exhibition of terracotta soldiers in one of the halls as I don’t know when I will go to Xi’an so after all we selected only few halls to go into. We skipped some of paintings exhibitions.

Forbidden City in Beijing

Inside the Forbidden City

I loved the Imperial Garden over there very much. It was small but it consisted of various landscaping elements (trees, rocks, water etc). It was a very relaxing place although there were many people.

The other thing that will always remind me of The Forbidden City is the roof decoration on the roof ridge. The more creatures on the roof the highest status of the building is like on the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Very beautiful creatures they are;)

Imperial Garden in the Firbidden City

Roof decorations in the background

The Forbidden City is surrounded on three sides by imperial gardens. One of them is Beihai Park on the north-west side which is centered on a lake. We planned to go there after visiting the Forbidden City but we changed our mind and took tricycle in order to see Mongolian Hutong area of the city where Genghis Khan used to live.

Beihai Park

The Great Wall of China

In front of Badaling sector of the Great Wall

After one day staying in Beijing we were asked by many people on the streets if we want to go for a trip to see The Great Wall. I was prepared to pay around 150 Yuen per person for that pleasure as I checked on internet at home but since there is winter we were able to get tickets for a hundred Yuen per person. I thought that we were so lucky but later on we found out that some Chinese people from the same trip paid 50 Yuen per person. This annoyed me a lot all the time we stayed in Beijing!! People cheat on everything but I wasn’t going to write about it here…
As everybody knows The Great Wall of China (长城; Chángchéng) is a series of stone and earthen fortifications built many centuries ago in order to protect Chinese Empire from attacks.



We visited the Great Wall at Badaling 八达岭 (Eight Prominent Peaks) sector, located at Yanqing County 70 km northwest of Beijing. It is the first section of the Great Wall to be opened to tourists. It was built in 1571 and was repaired in 1957. It is considered the best preserved wall construction. The section is about 5 km long with 19 watchtowers. There were many shops and sellers around which made the place commercialized. And I must say that sellers in there were like flies. You hardly could get rid of them. All of them want you to buy souvenirs over there. We climbed the left part of the Badaling wall which is steeper but gives a better scenery of the wall. Going down was even harder than going up. I will never forget that feeling when I was up there. We took many weird and funny pictures there:) It was amazing. I wish that all parts of The Great Wall were preserved as good as Badaling wall.

My warrior at the Great Wall

And a princess itself on a camel..

Jilin City

Jilin City (吉林市) is located in Jilin Province in North of China. It is famous of its big rime ice on the trees around the Songhua River. The rime ice is a natural phenomenon that occurs every year during January and February.

Unfortunately we haven't seen the rime ice there as we didn't go in the morning to the banks of the river. I think I would freeze to death if I did that! More than - 20 degrees. No thanks!

As the matter of fact I don’t know how I managed to go out for our little trips there. It was so cold! And now we are planning to go to Harbin after Chinese New Year which is more in the North than Jilin and I don’t know how will I survive;) but of course I want to see famous ice sculptures there. Well, I think it is worth. Don’t you think?

By the river in Jilin (my nose is about to fell off)

In Jilin City we visited North Hill Park (Bei Shan) and Dragon Pool Mountain Park.

There is a legend about the Dragon Pool that Dragon was catched by the Monk and chained to the Pool. When a dragon comes back to the land there will be flood.

In front of gate to Bei Shan

Temple on Bei Shan

Dragon Pool in Jilin

Hangzhou

Hangzhou (杭州) is the capital of Zhejiang province and is famous for its beautiful natural scenery, with the West Lake (Xī Hú, 西湖) as the most well-known location in China.

The city was a capital of the Southern Song Dynasty in 12th century.

The Venetian Marco Polo visited Hangzhou in the late 13th century and in his book he refers to the city as "beyond dispute the finest and the noblest in the world."

We stayed there for few days in November 2008 and we definitely are going back there again maybe sometime during summer. The city is so beautiful with its all historic relics and of course eye-catching nature.

Hangzhou is a great mystic place for holidays and people there are so honest and friendly. Both my husband and I were very pleased to stay there.

One of Hangzhou's most popular sights is West Lake which we saw on the first day. The lake covers an area of 6 square kilometers and includes some of Hangzhou's most famous historic and scenic places. We climbed hills around the lake but probably we should visit famous Buddhist temples instead like everyone else was doing. Anyway I didn’t regret that decision as we had great time.

West Lake in Hangzhou

Somewhere around the lake...

We of course went to Old China Street on He Fang Street where there are a lot of old style shops offering various kinds of souvenirs including silk and famous Longjing Tea. We bought some tea there as a gift for our relatives but later on some local people told us that we can buy better longjing tea in a local market from farmers as the one we bought already is only for tourists. Well, it is typical but at least we found out soon enough to buy good tea :)

Tea shop in Hangzhou

On He Fang Street in Hangzhou

The other place worth to see in Hangzhou is Xixi National Wetland Park located at the west part of the city. XiXi Wetland has a history of more than 1,800 years.

The park is densely crisscrossed with many watercourses, among which there are various ponds and lakes. We spent there whole day and we also took a boat there which was very interesting experience for us. The park itself is divided into few parts which most of them are for free. It is worth to take binoculars as there are many birds to see!

In a bamboo forest

View on the park

On the boat