The Temple of Heaven

Saturday Meeting:

We had agreed on the train to meet Paula at the Temple of Heaven on Saturday, the day after returning from Mongolia. Cullen and I set out to meet at 10:00am. The sky had a slight grey hue, and the air was a bit heavy. Despite this, we weren't the only people who planned to see the Temple of Heaven that day. The taxi dropped us off in a dense crowd of tourists and locals at the South entrance.

We purchased our through tickets, which enabled us to be able to see all the buildings in the Temple, not just stroll through the park. When we glanced at the back of the ticket, we were a bit disappointed to find there were not one, but about 4 entrances to the park. This made our odds of picking the right entrance pretty slim. We waited a bit, then expecting that she would have entered from the North entrance, the one closest to the direction she was staying...we entered the Temple of Heaven, expecting to meet her as we made our way across the park and buildings.

After a bit of stumbling around, we found a coffee shop. Cullen bought an "Americano" Coffee. Immediately he decided that they made it out of sewer water, and rushed to find some sugar. Despite his attempts to cover the flavor, he still describes this coffee as the most foul concoction described as coffee that he has ever had.

There were people all over the park playing a version on hacke-sack with a little shuttle-cock looking "sack". Most were red and fluorescent pink with white and beige feathers protruding out of the "up" side of the puck. Upon closer inspection, the "sack" part appeared to be several pieces of cloth stacked upon each other. We will definitely purchase one and dissect it. They look like loads of fun.

We went into several of the rebuilt Temple areas which had large furnaces for burning animal sacrifices and loads of stairs. The buildings were vibrantly painted, and structurally similar to all the others we have seen with the criss-crossing beam structure in the roof and the spacious standing area before the raised platforms.

There was an open circular platform where it is said that your voice echoes differently from the center. There were so many people trying to take photos and milling around on the structure, Cullan and I were unwilling to wait around and find out. The whole area had these very old and very huge cedars. They twisted and sprawled toward the sky higher than I have seen a cedar go. The girth of their trunks was so very impressive. Their twisted and gnarled bark held faces and shapes.

Voices rose over the temple Walls and we followed them out into the park to find out what the clamor was. There was a chorus sining in the park. We wandered a bit further and found a group under an archway playing tunes on a collection of Chinese instruments.

By the time we exited the park, the sky was quite blue and beautiful. We went and had some lunch, then were ready to head back home. The trip to Mongolia took a lot out of us, and we were ready for some relaxation.