Temple of Heaven and Neighborhood Museum

On our way to the train station we went into the local Shijia Hutong neighborhood museum. It was in the hutong in a courtyard building complex. It is a very impressive local museum and puts to shame all of the city museums we saw in Hoi An. It told the story of the community from the times of the Qing dynasty and featured models of the housing blocks, including some that have been replaced by more modern buildings. The city planning in Beijing features many of those communities. Hutongs are basically alleyways, with houses arranged around inner courtyards with privacy walls. In most other countries these would be slums or tenements, but in China they were carefully planned and arranged. The museum also had a section on famous people who lived in or passed through Shijia Hutong but that was less interesting to us. Finally they had one exhibit of legos that local people collected. At the exit we saw a cage someone had there with some speaking parrots.

After leaving our alley we took a subway to the Temple of Heaven, a large temple complex used exclusively for the emperor to pray for good agricultural weather. He'd be blamed if the year's harvest was poor. Near the entrance we found a little roofed hall where old Chinese folk were playing Mah-jiang or singing together.

There was a small dwelling where the emperor should fast before the prayers on the main prayer building: a large round building built on three levels of stone base. One of the emperors had an extra "shortcut" gate installed in a wall to save some trek up the stairs when his health was failing him at the age of 70, and to avoid abuse he decreed that his heirs could only use it once they reached 70 years of age. None of them lived that long, so only one emperor ever used that gate.

There was a smaller temple with two side shrines and a circular wall surrounding them all. The wall was shaped so if you stood behind one of the side buildings and spoke to it, it should reflect the sound so someone at the other should hear you. We tried it and it didn't work, but that could be because Leia kept leaving her post and not speaking to the wall.

Elsewhere, in the middle of the open-air sacrificial mound and altar there was a stone you could stand on which is supposed to make your voice extra sonorous. It didn't work. Maybe there were too many people around. This was also at the top of three layers of stone platform.

The whole temple was in a large area of parkland with practically no shade, so it was hot walking through it all afternoon. We came in from the north and exited at the south end of the park. After having a little lunch at a restaurant there, we thought the next subway stop south would be nearer than the one we came from, so we kept going south. The city blocks in Beijing are pretty big so it was still a bit of walking, but we went through a nice little park by the side of a river on our way.

We checked out of the hostel today and went to spend the last night in an airport hotel to catch our early flight more easily. We called a cab to pick us up from there, and I bought a bottle of beer from the bar to take with me. We also bought cup-of-noodle soup and snacks to eat at the new hotel rather than have another dinner at the hostel bar or a restaurant. It was good because there probably wasn't anything to eat in that area.