December @Beijing Part III_Palaces and Temples
Beijing (8 - 14 December 2011)
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within walking distance from Forbidden City
Besides the popular eating street I introduced in my earlier post, Wangfujing is somewhat an Orchard Road. Stretches of retail outlets and malls...
Qian Men （前门）Shopping District
Close to the Tiananmen, we were back to this place in one of the afternoon for some retail therapy before walking back to our hotel.
You can find lots of knick-knacks here, I like the very traditional architecture that has been retained. It's like in our chinatown.
Over to the other side of the streets, you will see a contrast of western influence in the retail outlets. Zara, Sephora, Abercrombie... There was a funny incident where Wen and I walked out of a shop with a hanger of red blouse clinging onto his slingbag! It was visibly dangling and we did not even noticed until quite a distance, not sure if we have eyes staring at us!
Worse still, the security sensor at the shop didn't even beep!! Haha! For show only. (Shop is not named - in order to protect its security integrity which it clearly breached!!) And Wen got to bring the item, with its hanger, back into the shop!
We dropped by Tian Fu Teahouse to buy some very good tea cookies and tarts as souvenirs. They also served us premium tea too!
A sight of Qian Men from afar. The sky got dark pretty quickly around 5-ish.
The Great Wall of China (长城) - get ready your walking gear, and stamina.
And then the walking starts...
It is THAT steep!! You have to hold on to the iron railings if your shoes do not have good friction support.
You can choose to take the cable car up to the wall and make your way down.
The elderly are so fit!!
View from the top.
View from outside the wall.
Happy to be making our way down...
A famous quote from Chairman Mao - "He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true Man!"
It took us 3hours to and fro the Badaling Great Wall which is a mere 3741m distance as compared to the actual entire Great Wall of over 6269km!! An ideal place to visit scenery and historical sites. But don't wait till too old to visit Beijing.
Used for the 2008 Olympics, the train station to this place was shut down after the Olympics (???) and we had to take a 20mins walk to this place. The Bird Nest is now used as a snow theme park.
The Cube - the swimming complex of the sports arena.
Awesome night view!
Beijing Ancient Observatory ( 北京古观象台)
One of world's oldest observatories, this place exhibits revolutionary tools used invented during the Ming Dynasty in 1442 and the Qing era. It was so dusty that day that I needed a mask on.
Instruments such as sundial (measure time by the position of the sun) and armillary spheres (model of objects in the sky to map constellations) were on display in the gallery compound.
On a last note, we caught the lunar eclipse on 10 Dec 2011. It was so cold that night, we were lucky to be able to see it through the glass window inside Hotel Kapok. Wen arranged his camera and took these pics.
Beijing is a great place to learn about the history and culture of China.
If you are someone who is inquisitive and adventurous, the food and places here will surely not disappoint you.
