15. Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square & Forbidden City

Today is our last full day of sightseeing here in China, and it’s going to be quite a busy one according to Max. So our last breakfast in China is at eight o’clock to be ready to set off by nine o’clock to the Temple of Heaven, followed by time for some retail therapy in a Chinese style shopping mall, then on to Tiananmen Square which includes Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum, finishing off our touring experience at the Forbidden City, and the day finally ending up with a speciality

crispy duck dinner. The weather is clear, sunny and warm, just as it was yesterday; we have certainly been very lucky throughout these two weeks weather wise, and truly blessed with the perfectly clear skies these last two days!

First stop off is at the Temple of Heaven, which is set within a huge park with cypress trees that are up to 800 years old. As it was still early in the day, there were many people throughout the area doing line dancing, tai chi, foot badminton and exercising on the many pieces of outdoor gym equipment. There was even an elderly man doing full gymnastic rotations on one of the high bars, he just had to have been a gymnast as he was very good, and putting much younger people to shame with his amazing ability. We even had a go on a pair of the step frames, which was actually

harder than it looked, and Elaine did some back stretches over what could only be described as an object of torture..!!!

The Temple itself was built during the Ming Dynasty in 1420, it covers an area of 270 acres and is the largest building for religious worship in China. It was originally used by the Ming and Qing emperors to pay homage to Heaven as well as to pray for a year of rich abundant harvest. The main building here is the circular three tiered Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, set on three circular tiers of marble steps it stands at an impressive thirty eight metres tall and is painted in various hues of green, blue and yellow to represent Heaven and Earth.

Next up was our shopping experience, originally we only had an hour here, but many of our fellow tourist would have liked

longer as this was the only shopping opportunity we had; so I spoke to Max earlier in the day and he agreed to giving us an extra twenty minutes. Everything here had to be bartered for, which doesn’t come naturally to us Brits, and Elaine was quite uncomfortable with it all. However, she still managed to get two lovely colourful kimono like gowns down from a starting price of 900 yuan to 600 yuan, which we agreed was still way too pricey and she didn’t have that much on her; so after more haggling she ended up paying only 250 yuan... about £26.50.

Now I wanted a particular Great Wall of China tee-shirt and when the salesman returned with one in my size the starting price was an unbelievable 280 yuan, which almost immediately came down to 180 yuan; I offered 20 yuan which he said he would make a loss at, so he started repacking the

shirt. Being the generous soul that I am I offered him 30 yuan and said I would pay no more... at this point he looked more than a little miffed and just threw the unwrapped shirt at me and begrudgingly snatched the 30 yuan... about £3.80.

After a short stop for lunch we headed off to our third stop of the day, the infamous Tiananmen Square, it’s the largest city square in the world, and it truly is big... very big, plus there were relatively few people here which made our sightseeing so much more comfortable. We had a huge slice of luck in that there was an American trade delegation having talks in Beijing, and as we got up to Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum in the middle of the Square, they all drove up in a phalanx of black suv’s and stopped outside it to view the music and fountain display put on just for them; how fortunate was

that! The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, commonly known as the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, was built soon after Mao’s death on 9th Sept. 1976, it was actually started on 24th November and completed just over fourteen months later on 24th May 1977. There was more high profile security here than anywhere else we’d been so far.

Our last stop of the day, and of the tour, was the Forbidden City, it covered such a large area we were dropped off by the South Gate, and then picked up at the north gate to save us having a long back track to the coach! It was built in 1406/20 and consists of some 980 buildings set in 180 acres, and was originally built to be used as the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government for almost 500 years. This was a

wonderful end to an amazing 15 days of sightseeing throughout this amazingly diverse and interesting country.

No let up yet though, it was now time for our final meal of the holiday, and it was a special Peking (Crispy) Duck with pancakes dinner, and the chef even prepared the ducks in front of us. We even had some dessert choices, water melon and the best apple fritters I’ve ever tasted... hmm hmmm!

We were back to the hotel before eight o’clock to give us plenty of time to rest and get packed for our early start at silly o'clock tomorrow, to get to the the airport in plenty of time for our seven-thirty flight all the way back down to Shanghai for our ongoing flight to Heathrow... which would then take us all the way back up past Shanghai on the way...!!!