Beijing

Today we visit the Summer Palace as well as the Temple of Heaven in the south of Beijing.

The Summer Palace - declared by UNESCO as an "outstanding expression of the creative art of Chinese landscape garden design" is an immense park mainly dominated by Longevity Hill (60 meters high) and the Kunming Lake. This site had long been a royal garden and summer resort for the residents of the Forbidden City. It was enlarged by Emperor Qianlong (1735-1796) as a present for the 60th birthday of his mother. During his reign, Kunming Lake was expanded by extending an existing body of water to imitate the West Lake in Hangzhou and artisans reproduced the garden architecture styles of various palaces in China. Anglo-French troops damaged the buildings during the Second Opium War (1860). Empress Dowager Cixi diverted 30 million taels of silver, said to be originally designated for the Chinese navy (the immobile marble boat at the edge of the lake still reminds the visitor of this story), into the reconstruction and enlargement of the Summer Palace. In 1900 the palace complex suffered another attack by foreign troops during the Boxer Rebellion and was once again badly damaged. Restorations took place a few years later and the Summer Palace was opened to the public in 1924.

The Temple of Heaven "Tian Tan" - the perfection of Ming architecture situated in southeastern Beijing in Xuanwu District - has come to symbolize Beijing. Construction of the complex began in 1420, and was thereafter visited by all subsequent emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties to pray for good harvests, seek divine clearance and atone for the sins of the people. The northern end of the park is semicircular and the southern end is square - a pattern deriving from the ancient Chinese belief that heaven is round and earth is square. The Temple of Heaven is the grandest of the four great temples located in Beijing. The other prominent temples include the Temple of Sun in the east, the Temple of Earth in the north, and the Temple of Moon in the west.

The main building of the whole complex is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, which is a magnificent piece mounted on a three-tiered marble terrace. It was built 1420 by the Emperor Zhu Di (Yongle), consumed by fire in 1889 and re-erected the following year. The wooden pillars support the 38m high ceiling without a single nail.

The octagonal Imperial Vault of Heaven is structured along the lines of the older Hall of Prayer of Good Harvests, though it is smaller. It used to contain tablets of the emperor's ancestors, which were used in the winter solstice ceremony. Surrounding the Imperial Vault of Heaven is the Echo Wall, where a whisper can travel clearly from one end to the other. The Three Echo Stones are just outside of the gate of the Imperial Vault of Heaven. If you speak facing the vault while standing on the first stone, you will hear one echo; standing on the second and then the third stone, you will hear two and three echoes respectively.

The 5m high Round Altar was constructed in 1530 and rebuilt in 1740. It is composed of white marble arrayed in three tiers, and its geometry revolves around the imperial number nine. Odd numbers were considered heavenly and 9 is the largest single-digit odd number. The top tier - thought to symbolize heaven - has nine rings of stones, each ring composed of multiples of nine stones, so that the ninth ring has 81 stones. The middle tier - earth - has the 10th to 18th rings and the bottom tier - man - has the 19th to 27th rings, ending with a total of 243 stones in the largest ring. The number of stairs and balustrades are also multiples of nine.

The 360m long and 30m broad Danbi-Bridge connects the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest and the Imperial Vault of Heaven. The south end of the Bridge is lower than its north end. The emperors believed that they could go to heaven through this bridge, which is why it is also called "Sacred Way".