Day 5 - Tuesday, Sept 17 - Temple of Heaven and Forbidden City


Jetlag kicked in last night. We were both awake most of the night after about 1am and were very groggy this morning.

When we came down for breakfast this morning, the dining room was almost empty as the tour schedules didn’t start as early. It did fill up pretty quickly.

We had to pack up our main luggage to be collected by the porters by 8:30. We won’t see it again until we get on the Russian train tomorrow afternoon. In our day packs we need to keep things that we will need for overnight on the Chinese train today.

Our first stop was the Temple of Heaven, a huge park and shrine complex built in 1420 where the emperor would come to pray for a good harvest in a very elaborate ceremony. Until the fall of the last emperor in 1911, this was forbidden to the public and years later it was opened to the public as a park and historical site.

We first went to the exercise area where there were many machines for people to work out on. Most of the people there were older but some of them must have been gymnasts earlier in life as they were doing splits on top of elevated bars and swinging on the bars. Groups of women were doing dance exercise to popular music and another group was practicing martial arts with numchucks. Our Chinese guide gave us a lesson on Tai-Chi.
Working out at the Temple of Heaven


Next stop was the main shrine, “Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests”, a large circular wooden building, very highly painted on a 3-tier marble pedestal. It was hot with the temperature in the mid-80s so I bought a delicious green tea popsicle from a vendor in the main plaza.
Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests


From there we went to a “hutong” where we had a lunch of traditional foods cooked on a family home. A “hutong” is a traditional Chinese neighborhood with a cluster of homes with an open plaza for vegetable and other markets. A group of 4 homes would be around a central open space. From the outside, there isn’t much to see. Traditional homes have a threshold to keep out the evil spirits that one must step over. During the 1960s and 1970s, many hutongs were demolished to make room for the large highways through the city – traffic is terrible but it is hard to imagine what it would be without these highways. Now, many of the historic hutongs are protected from development.

Our hostess had been a professional chef before retiring so we had a delicious meal with about 6 different dishes of pork, chicken, beef, squash, tomatoes, carrots. After the meal she gave us a lesson on making Chinese dumplings – easier said than done!
Making dumplings


After lunch, we went to the Forbidden City which was the home of the emperor from 1420 until 1911. The penalty for unauthorized entry was beheading! At its peak, 6000 people lived inside, the emperor, empress, concubines, other royal family, administrative staff and servants. It is said the emperor had up to 3000 concubines and there was a lot of palace intrigue as to which concubines would be the most favored. Security is getting increasingly tight leading up to National Day on Oct 1 and we had to walk a mile from the bus to the entrance and then almost a mile back – I got 7 miles and over 14000 steps on my Fitbit yesterday.
Imperial Palace in Forbidden City


For dinner, we went to one of only two “real” Peking Duck restaurants. The restaurant we went to is said to be 600 years old. The Peking Duck was tasty but seemed to be more of a ceremony than anything else. The duck (we didn’t find out until later that they are force-fed) is sliced thin by an expert carver. The slices are then put on a wrapper with hoisin sauce, sliced cucumber and leeks and then rolled up.
Peking Duck


We then went to the Beijing west train station to board our Chinese train that will take us to Erlian, near the Mongolian border. We are taking a chartered train just for tourists connecting to trains in Mongolia. Our train compartment has 4 berths but fortunately, there are only two of us in it.

We went to bed around 10:30 as the train was heading out of Beijing.

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