Day 11, On a Stick

This morning, E decides to spend some quality time in the hotel while the rest of us head out to the Temple of Heaven, which is a slightly farther walk from our hotel than the Forbidden City. The park has an admission fee and some of the individual areas have separate tickets all of which we get in one perforated sheet for less than $5.

Early in the morning, there are older gentlemen in the park practicing water calligraphy like this:

Even as we're watching him write a poem about bringing in the harvest, the sun is erasing his earliest strokes.

There are also several people playing with paddles and shuttlecocks or hackey sacks with feathers. They invite us to join for a few seconds before trying to sell the games to us. I can't remember if I have mentioned Panda hats. The first street vendors we saw in Beijing were selling these plush panda heads with straps that you can tie onto your head as hats. We thought they were hilarious, but in this weather they're even more popular than the hello kitty SARS masks (or D&G or whoever your favorite designer is). Panda hats are also for sale here. 

The first area of the park we visit is the Hall of Abstinence, which has conveniently photographable aerial photography of itself. One room in the main building has paintings of each of the 22 emperors who used this site and dates for their reigns.

Next we visit the Divine Music Administration, which was renovated recently after displacing the many people who had made homes in the structure. We know this because part of one building is an exhibit documenting the renovation efforts. There is also a room with music theory and replicas of large chimes that we've seen in several places, but always behind gates. Obviously this means we should play with them.

We walk around some more admiring just how uniformly spaced the trees are and watching some people harvest juniper berries before walking through the main part of the park. I try out the special location that should increase the volume of my voice, but I'm too quiet to hear.

祈年殿 is a building constructed without nails. The support columns are made from Oregon fir, tall enough to use a single piece for the full height.

We head back to the hotel to collect our other traveler for a late hot pot lunch at a Chinese Muslim restaurant. Lunch is slices of several different meats cooked in a broth at the table. It's fun and tasty.

After lunch, we get jasmine tea icecream and invest more serious time into shopping. I get to see the rest of the book store and buy a novel printed in both Chinese and English. Y picks up a book about Cixi. We take a taxi away from the shopping district our hotel is in and visit the Silk Market, a multi-story building full of stalls with clothes, accessories, carvings, and toys. This venue is for haggling and Bill does not enjoy it at all. After exploring the first couple of floors, we head back to the hotel and out for appetizers from street vendors. Fun things like lamb and candied hawthorns. And adventurous things like scorpions:

You can find just about anything on a stick. Even sheep penis, which none of us try. In addition to the delicious scorpion, I also try bee cocoons and centipede. I do not recommend the centipede. It tastes like dirt and the fried legs are sharp spikes that stab at you as you chew. Scorpion and bee, though, are pretty cool. Dinner is at a Hun restaurant that has dog on the menu, but we don't order it, opting instead for animals that none of us actually own. Maybe next time.