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The morning's visit takes us to the Lama temple. Originally built in the Qing dynasty as an official residence for court eunuchs, it has spent time as an imperial palace and, since the 18th Century in its present use as a monastery for Tibetan Buddhist Monks.
The complex of temples extends over seven quadrangles each filled with Buddhist icons. Most impressive of all is the located in the final quadrangle: a magnificent 26 metre high Buddha, housed in an exquisitely decorated 3-story circular building with balconies on each floor. All carved out of a single sandalwood tree, the Buddha officially holds the hotly contested Guinness World Record for "Biggest Buddha Carved Out of a Single Sandalwood Tree."
We pick James up from the airport, fresh from his twentysomething hour set of flights from Tampa, and go directly to the Temple of Heaven. The Temple is actually a complex of buildings dating from the 15th Century all dedicated to prayer for good harvests. Accordingly the most impressive building is the "Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests", and also within the complex is an altar where animals were sacrificed. The ritual of sacrifice was rather a complicated two day procedure that involved the Emperor being locked away in one particular walled building, surrounded by a moat. The idea of all the protection was that the Emperor should not, for the duration of the ceremony, eat, have sex…or involve himself with matters of state. I'm sure he was positively gagging to take a look at some policy documents after two days locked away.
The most fascinating part of our day at the Temple is when we take a look around the surrounding park. This park has its very own Long Corridor, not quite on the scale of the Summer Palace's and this one is populated by locals engaging in various pastimes. These include playing badminton with a table tennis racquet, playing football with a shuttlecock and chequers (no, unfortunately they haven't started playing table tennis with a football to complete the circle.) Some spontaneous ballroom dancing is taking place near the park gate also, no partner required, just step on up and let yourself go.
James and I get our names rendered in Chinese letters by a calligrapher after an intriguing haggling contest. We negotiate the price down to half of the original quote before the artist gets to work. The saleswoman then tries to negotiate us back up again, unsurprisingly unsuccessfully. The newly Christened Ja-me-ss, and Ki-Re-An, leave the shop pleased with their purchases.
Our evening meal is in one of Beijing's more exclusive restaurants set in an intimate courtyard where we banquet on an excellent selection of fish, chicken and crayfish. Entertainment is provided by a chef throwing some fresh noodles, and a particularly good "face change" artist who can change his mask in less than the blink of an eye. We finish the meal with some deep fried ice cream (the Glaswegians were clearly wrong to think they'd deep fried everything possible), and, more unusually some 'coffee jelly.'
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