China Day Seven -- Temple Day

The Blau Children on the steps
of the Temple of Heaven

Today was our day to visit several temples throughout the city. We decided to make it more of a laid back day since these were the last things we were planning on seeing while we were in Beijing. With two days left here we didn't need to speed through the day. That was a good plan because our feet were spent.

After a relaxing morning we headed down the street to see if our laundry was completed. It wasn't yet, so we headed further to Wangfujing yet again. This time we looked at the giant five story mall there. We didn't stop in any of the stores there. It wasn't much different than an American mall. I did see a store that sold these dolls that looked a lot like the Monkey-Do dolls that they used to sell in the 80's. I told the girls how much I always wanted one of those dolls, and they told me that that was disturbing. The dolls really looked creepy. But I did check out to see how much they were. Way too much -- especially for a doll that would give my kids nightmares.

JoJo is unimpressed with his two
Chinese admirers, but they thought
he was quite a catch

After our stroll through Wangfujing we headed to the subway and headed to the Temple of Heaven. This temple is amazing. It towers over the area, and kind of looks like a giant mushroom in shape, but it is way more beautiful than that sorry description. I thought that it was interesting that this building was built without any nails. I was expecting that each of these temples we saw today would be just a big beautiful building, but actually they are all huge areas with several buildings and courtyards. This was a popular building for tourists. My favorite thing to see was a large group of monks in colorful red robes. They were all pretty young men -- probably in their early twenties. The neat thing was that they were tourists just like us. All of them had their digital cameras and stopped to take individual pictures in front of the structure. Then they saw us and stopped to ask if they could get a picture of us. So funny! We were as interesting and strange to them as they were to us. They especially liked Spencer, so he was in a bunch of shots with different monks.

The whole group in front of the Temple of Heaven

By the Temple of Heaven with this nice
wise looking man

Hyrum asked to take a picture with these
sweet "Chinese" children, but they
informed us after the picture that
they were Filipino tourists. Oh well!  Still
a cute picture.

Hyrum donating a Chinese yuan to the Buddhist temple fund

Taking a break

Monks touring the temple

Another pic of the temple from the outside

It was neat to see a building where they displayed several pictures of visiting dignitaries who had visited the temple. There was one of Richard Nixon, but there were also lots of pictures of leaders who are not seen very positively in the US. Interesting to see how other countries see them.

All the famous leaders who have toured the temple

A group of Chinese elementary students
on a tour of the temple

In front of the "Nine-Dragon" Juniper tree.  For the
significance of this, refer back to our trek to
find the Nine Dragon Wall in
The Forbidden City. 

There was a park area in the temple complex where people sat and relaxed or played games. Herman went up to a group of Chinese school children who were either middle school or early high school age. He asked them to play a game with us. It is a game sort of like hacky sack, but it is played with a thing that looks a lot like a cock from badminton. It is fun to watch, but we lack a lot in skills. The Chinese kids loved seeing us try, though.

Playing some sort of shuttlecock game with
a group of Chinese students

Taking the obligatory tourist photo with these
students after they clobbered us in the game

We thought the monks were cool.  They thought
that we were.  Here we are posing with a
monk for one of his photos.

They really thought Spencer was awesome!

And they loved Hyrum too!

We can say that we "please be self-restraint and be
a good tourist to mold a well-mannered
imagination."  At least I think we did.

After our visit to the Temple of Heaven we headed back to the neighborhood where the Lama Temple is located. We started out by visiting the Confucius Temple that is across the street from the Lama Temple. There wasn't much to see here. There were a lot of Confucius statues and some super old trees -- some almost seven hundred years old. There was a hall of stone tablets that held all of the teachings of Confucius. Herman was super nervous here because he worried that the kids were going to knock over the stones and start a domino effect, ruining the entire structure. But all was well. We made it through without incident.

Confucius say "Blau family is sweet!"

Hall of Confucius sayings.  I could just see these
large tablets falling like dominoes because one of us
accidentally bumped into them, so I was a bit
nervous in this part of the complex.

In front of the Confucius Temple

We then raced over to the Lama Temple. It closed at 4 pm, and it was 3:45. Laney was dying to go, and so we ran. That was no easy task since our feet were throbbing. But we made it in the nick of time. I am so glad we came. As we were running toward it I thought that it wouldn't be worth the pain of running. It was just going to be one more temple to see. However we found that this was our favorite place to visit all day. Like every other place it was beautiful, but there was a reverence to this place that was different. It almost felt strange to be there, wrong even. This temple contained several courtyard areas, and in each area there was a type of alter place for Buddhists to worship. There was a fire area where they could light incense and then kneel while saying their prayers. Then they would arise and add their stack of incense sticks to the large burning pot before the alter. We saw several people at each station praying. We felt like we were intruding, but there were tour groups walking through at the same time as us, so it wasn't something that was looked
down on. Still, it was beautiful to see. We were super quiet as we walked everywhere here. A nice experience.

Pretty view in the midst of the Lama Temple complex

Beautiful ornate buildings in the temple complex

There were lots of places to make burnt offerings

A place where incense is burned by those offering prayers

After we left the Lama Temple we were ready to head home, but we exited in a different spot than we had entered, so we got turned around. We didn't end up walking right back to our subway stop. We ended up traveling through another Chinese neighborhood outside of the tourist area. This time we came upon a real Chinese market area, not one catering to tourists, but one that served the local population. We wandered through this leisurely. Because it didn't cater to tourists the merchants were not aggressive and trying to grab us. They just let us come to them. It was a nice relaxing experience. We purchased some meat on a stick to eat for a late lunch, and then we bought a beautiful silk bed cover and pillowcases for very little money. It was a nice shopping experience for me -- more to my speed.

We were happy to find a place that sold ice cream.
It definitely wasn't as good as American ice cream.
It was really hard and not very sweet.  But it was just
what we wanted at the time, so it hit the spot.

Checking out the goods at a local street market

Here is the nice man who sold us our beautiful bed covering.

As we walked we came upon an old tea shop, and I went inside to purchase some tea as gifts for some of our tea drinking friends and family. No one inside spoke a lick of English, and they weren't accustomed to dealing with tourists, so we had to rely on hand signals a bunch. Still they were super nice, and once I heard a few tea related words that sounded familiar in English I went with those types of teas. It was a fun experience for me, and we got the tea for much cheaper than it sells in the US.

In front of the nice tea shop

We got home and picked up our laundry. Hurray! It was all there and clean, although it was in some serious need of some fabric softener. Still, I'm not complaining. I have never been quite so happy to see clean clothes. We ate dinner at a local restaurant near our hotel. It was delicious. We ended the day exhausted yet again. Still it was an amazing day.

More wise advice in the subway station

The picture doesn't do it justice, but my foot here is
totally swollen and bruised from all of our walking.

This sign was in the park next to our hotel, explaining
that we should not feed the beautiful fish in the pond.
We did "refuse to feed."

We are almost used to the time change. We are waking up at about 5 am now instead of 2 am. It makes the days go by smoother. Tomorrow is a free day for us. We are going to see where it takes us. Then I'll be packing up. We'll be heading out early on Sunday morning for our day long train ride on the super speedy train to Wuhan. It has been an amazing trip!