Weather today is warm and sunny but still a lot of haze due to the dust in the air.  We drove past the new National Grand Theater building to see if it was open to tours.  They are still working on the roof and the grounds are not done contrary to what we saw on the Discovery Channel.  No tours here so on to the Temple of Heaven.

The Temple of Heaven is in a park on the South side of Beijing.  The Temple was built by the Emperor Yongle in 1420 to offer sacrifices to heaven and earth.  It is famous because it is the only surviving round temple in China.  The park itself is beautiful and was full of people enjoying themselves.  We saw groups waving flags, singing songs, playing cards, and otherwise just enjoying the sunny day.  The Temple has been undergoing a year long restoration and this is the first day it has been open.  The artwork was brilliant and you could smell the new paint odor.

The Temple courtyard is a large square with several supporting buildings.  One of them is an information center with the history of the Temple, diagrams of how it is built, pictures of it in the past and of people who have visited it.  Nixon visited the temple during his visit to China in 1972.  The temple itself sits on a round marble base and is built with two concentric circles of 12 posts supporting the first two levels.  The twelve posts correspond to the ancient Chinese 12 time periods in a day.  The top level has only 4 supporting posts with 8 short posts filing in to make 12 posts.

We made a brief stop at a Pearl Center to learn about fresh water pearls (and to give Jerry an opportunity to buy an anniversary gift) then an enjoyable lunch at a restaurant that does Shanghai style food.  This style of Chinese cooking is closer to the type that we have in the US so it tasted familiar to the both of us.  Afterwards we went to the Lama Temple just a little North of our Hotel.  This is an active Lama Monastery.  When you enter the temple you go through a series of courtyards, each one leading to a Temple with one of more Buddhas.  The first Buddha is a small laughing Buddha.  The last one is a huge 27 meter tall wooden Buddha from Nepal given to a past Emperor by the Dali Lama when he saved Tibet from invasion.  Many people were praying and burning so much incense that you can see clouds of smoke in the pictures.

After we got dropped off at our hotel, we took a walk over to the night market area.  Here Kathy found a neighborhood sewing shop and several low price clothing stores.  You see all sorts of labels in the stores like Target, etc.  Imagine getting 4 pairs of pants and a blouse for less than $25.  Hemming is 63 cents each. Jerry also found a couple of tops that he liked.