Part 1: Sights and Sounds: Temple of Heaven and Donghuamen Night Market

Tourist sight numero dos on the list was the Temple of Heaven, a large park with a series of temples, altars and such. I cannot do justice to explaining these places so please feel free to open another window and Google them at anytime because all I will offer are silly details, cheesy jokes and unprofessional images of them and myself in this blog.

The Temple of Heaven is only one temple of many at this wonderful park in the southeast of Beijing, I guess one can say it is the grandest. This is where important people would come and pray for a good harvest when that sort of thing was still very important. It was very nice to see trees and even nicer to witness local Chinese people playing games, singing, doing water calligraphy and best of all dancing on this lovely afternoon. Jenna and I even played a little game of ping-pong without the table.

After walking through the park and some of the temples, which by the way I may add requires a ticket purchase with additional fees per temple, we headed down the hill following the sound of music. Lined up in a covered ancient outdoor hallway were many small groups of older Chinese folks doing artsy fartsy things. My favorite was an old man acting out a play with tons of expression and lip singing why two older women stood on the side and sang. That's also when I first spotted the water calligraphy on the floor (I later found the culprit as well).

On the way home we somehow stumbled across the Donghuamen Night Market, the place one goes to eat fried sea urchin, scorpions, starfish and other yummies on a stick. Though it was not night, the market lived up to its reputation. It was loud and bustling with many tourists and courageous ones at that...I mean I always thought scorpions where poisonous. Needless to say I only went near to snap a photo (sorry to let anyone down). Right outside the market was a more modern mall called Oriental plaza which was swarming in Olympic paraphernalia, please send all orders to my email, I charge a 25% service fee.