Beijing Temple of Heaven (Saturday August 18th, 2018 )

Today was one of our biggest walking days on the tour. We started out at the Temple of Heaven, followed by a morning in the park, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. 

The Temple of Heaven was built on 500 acres, and is the largest imperial temple in the world. It was built in 1420 by the third Ming Emperor.  

We entered the Temple of Heaven through a heavy archway with 9 rows of 9 knobs each.  Nine is the number of the emperor.

The emperor believed that he was the son of the God of Heaven. The big round building is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest. It is the location where the emperor would perform sacred ceremonies. This temple is built entirely of wood without any nails.  

Each of the pillars is a single tree trunk of the Thuja tree. These trees are now extinct from over cutting. 

When Mao Zedong, founder of the Peoples Republic of China took command of the country, he outlawed all religion.  It is no longer illegal to practice religion, but to this day, religion has really not been restored in the country.  There are small groups of people who practice Buddhism, Taoism or a few other religions, but it is not wide spread.  So although the Temple of Heaven used to be a sacred temple, it was turned into a city park and museum in 1919 just like so many other ancient temples in China. 

We encountered some rain at the temple, but it wasn’t bad at all.  It made for great pictures and it kept the temperatures much cooler than they had been.

When we left the temple and went out on to the grounds, there were many older people outside playing games and exercising on the equipment. This seems to be where they meet for their social interaction. They did everything from cards, to hacky sack to stretching.

It was fun to see that the grounds of the temple are still so heavily used, but it was sad to see that this is no longer a scared sight to anyone.