Starting to Wrap Up Beijing...

Hey everybody! First of all, I want to apologize to anyone who has been sending emails to RBallard14@gmail.com. It hadn't occurred to me that it was the email sending out blog notifications, and I happen to rarely check that email address (my main email address is kovax14@comcast.net). I'll reply to all of you soon!

Second of all, I'm in Shanghai! However, before I move on to talk about Shanghai, I have a few things to wrap up with Beijing. 

The first thing is Yuan Ming Yuan (圆明园）, which roughly translates to English as the "Garden of Perfect Clarity". Construction for this old summer palace (which was originally known as the Imperial Gardens) began in 1707 and consists of three main gardens. The architectural style of the whole complex is very divergent from traditional Chinese architecture, and has a distinct Western influence as you will see.  The palace was, however, destroyed in 1860 during the Second Opium War. That it has since lain in ruins was entirely the decision of the Chinese government, whose intention for the site was that it would provide future generations with a reminder of foreign aggression against China. If you want to read more about its history, you may do so here: Yuan Ming Yuan (Old Summer Palace)

Here's the link to the album, and here's the slideshow: (take note of the print that shows the palace before it was destroyed)

The lotus flowers floating on the water in this garden are harvested and made into a special flower tea (花茶) that can be purchased at the gardens. I didn't buy any for myself but my host family bought a container of it so I was able to try it later on, and it was good！ 

This next slideshow shows the Temple of Heaven. It has been a while since I visited, so most of the particulars about its history are not clear in my mind. So since I would otherwise be paraphrasing from my favorite online encyclopedia, I might as well just give you the link if you are just that curious: Temple of Heaven

I will take note of one thing. As you will see in the photos there is a set of stairs leading up to the temple. The stairs are divided into three tiers, and each tier contains NINE stairs, which continues the trend that I started to explain in my post about the Forbidden City. Also, the Temple of Heaven is a popular place for Elderly people to come and do their morning exercises. You will usually see groups of people doing Tai Chi together or some kind of aerobics, and there are also usually several groups scattered throughout the park singing loud (and sometimes out of tune) karaoke...and shamelessly at that! Anyway, here's a link to the album, and here's the slideshow:

If you are interested, right outside the the gates to the Temple of Heaven park is a teahouse that performs tea very simple and traditional tea ceremonies that are worth stopping for. The tea of choice in Beijing is usually 茉莉花茶, or Green Tea infused with Jasmine Flowers. It's excellent.

This is a picture from the tea ceremony. Look a little bit left of the middle of the picture to see two glasses, a green one and a clear one with a brown thing floating inside. That thing is a ceramic sculpture of a little boy, fondly known as "The Pee-Pee Boy". He first has to float in cold water and fill up with water, and afterwards you stand him up and pour boiling water on his head and he shoots cold water out of a peculiarly shaped spout in his lower region. It actually shoots the water several meters, and the tea ceremony lady kept spraying me with it!  I got one free with my purchase, and when I get back I will do demonstrations at request.

I have two Beijing posts left in me, one is short and will probably be tomorrow, the other will have to wait because it contains several videos, and I won't be able to format the video files correctly until I get home (but the videos are awesome, so wait for it). After that I'll do some posts on Shanghai, and then probably one post each for Nanjing, Suzhou, and Zhou Zhuang (each of which is a different city or town)