The last of our three days in Beijing as part of our pre-cruise stay in China’s capital featured just one visit to a place of interest but this would end up being my favourite location in the city. The Temple of Heaven is an early fifteenth century complex of religious buildings and parks, maintained and used off and on in that capacity until the late nineteenth century. After a few periods of occupation and use as bases of operation during wars – the Second Opium War and the Boxer Rebellion – more peaceful times fell in the area and the Temple of Heaven was opened up as a public park in 1918.
The Temple of Heaven in Beijing is large and spacious, but so much of that space was filled with people that our arrival was to ripples of noise from every direction; different types of music overlapping; distant singing; that undulating murmur of thousands of people engaged in conversations. Our guide had already explained that this was one of the main meeting places for locals to come and engage in social activities including exercise, dancing, singing, playing games, and even just avoiding solitude for some of the more elderly citizens. It was a friendly, welcoming riot.
After watching some of the local Chinese men and women performing some Tai Chi we were led, slowly, through a long, covered walkway area, absolutely rammed with people. It was a mix of tour groups (a few international groups such as our own, but the majority coming from elsewhere in mainland China to see their nation’s capital) and locals filling this space, with the latter set using some benches and shade to take part in games of dominoes or Mahjong or cards, singing, dancing, or engaging in crafts including knitting. Fabulously noisy, filled with life. It’s an experience I cannot recommend highly enough if you ever visit Beijing.
Passing through the covered walkway of activities we then approached the most impressive structure in the complex, a building that we originally thought was the Temple of Heaven itself but was in fact the Hall Of Prayer For Good Harvests. No idea what it was used for but if I had to guess I’d say it was perhaps some kind of hall, maybe one in which people could pray and ask for harvests, and most likely good ones. Circular and built on a marbled base, the hall is completely wooden and constructed without using nails. The one seen today dates from the late nineteenth century as the previous building on this spot was struck by lightning and burned down.
As is the way with many of these excursions you’ll take when you choose to cruise, we then had some free time to explore as we wanted before meeting back at the entrance to the public park. The architecture of the buildings was undeniably fabulous but we’d seen plenty of this style in Beijing over the previous few days. On the other hand, the Chinese people taking part in their social activities were utterly enthralling so while many others in our tour group took a look around the halls either side of the most impressive, multi-tiered one we were all stood around at this point my wife and I decided to head for some of the open spaces in which people were dancing or exercising instead.
One thing we spotted around this time was an argument breaking out between a group of men and women in their seventies, seemingly over cheating in dominoes as far as we could tell. Raised voices and a little bit of shoving was surprisingly lovely to witness.
The following video is one that just makes my heart smile. I’m not one for line dancing when it is associated with cowboy hats but older people in China is a whole different matter.
The range of activities was great to see. The Temple of Heaven was a place where you could see that it would suit almost anybody somewhere in the grounds. Right next to the more energetic line dancing there was ballroom dancing on show. We felt at the time and still feel that this sort of group activities place primarily for elder people to meet, enjoy the open air, enjoy the company, enjoy engaging their brains, or get a little bit of physical fitness is something that could really do with appearing in more cities around the world.
The final activity we saw being performed involved lots of ribbon-twirling, just showing that there was a full range of physical exertions or lack thereof on show and represented by the people of Beijing. In addition to looking pretty it was also one of those things that felt very Chinese; not the sort of thing you’d see taking place in a park back home, and isn’t that a fantastic reason to go travelling?
And it wasn’t just the older crowd and tourists from far and wide enjoying everything going on in the Temple of Heaven.
We could easily have spent most of an entire day in the Temple of Heaven in Beijing; it was that engrossing. However, it was now time to meet our bus outside the entrance and bid a fond farewell to the Chinese city. One last sight, and a very pleasing one, was that of a man composing poetry with water on the paving slabs of the ground.
From the Temple of Heaven we had a stop at a restaurant (the one with the seal in the pool on that link) before we were taken down to Tianjin where our very first cruise would commence on Diamond Princess.