the Temple of Heaven

To be truthful, I didn't even know what this beast was until I saw it in one of my old hagwon's textbooks on a list of must-see landmarks in different countries. It was right up there with the Statue of Liberty and the Apple ('scuse me, Eiffel) Tower. Interesting cylindro-conical sort of structure with fetching blue detailing and attractive rounded eaves. Might be worth a look.

Boy, was it ever. Once you got past the obstacle course, that is.

First we had to pass through the overcrowded, grungy Beijing subway system and squeeze by the little four-year-old girl who took a dump on the pavement in front of the ticket office, her mother chasing her around with a doggie bag like her little girl was some kind of pet. After that, though, we found ourselves in a scenic park.

The complex as a whole is set up like the Forbidden City. Instead of courtyard after courtyard, though, it's gate after gate, and ticket after ticket. You had to buy a ream of four tickets (for something like six dollars American) to penetrate all the way into the park and see its every secret. We paid for everything, but we only saw the garden and the temple itself. Oh, and these, the Seven Star-Stones:

They're supposed to represent the seven divine peaks of China, or something, and also the unity of each of China's distant provinces. (Tell that to the Uighurs, guys.)

Then we hit the temple proper.

Originally constructed between 1406 and 1420, this particular building (called the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests) is 38 meters tall, 36 meters in circumference, and is built entirely of wood—not so much as a nail. The Chinese emperor and his entourage would come here to pray for a generous haul of rice every harvest season. Given its central location, the temple complex has often been conquered and used as a command center by invading forces, notably the Anglo-French Alliance during the Second Opium War in the late 1850s (not to be confused with the Taiping Rebellion) and the Eight-Nation Alliance in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion.

But I didn't come here to tell you that. I came here to be sententious.  

Let me just say this: my initial impressions of the Chinese people (or at least the Beijingites) were negative. After I saw my fiancée get groped at Donghuamen Night Market, that four-year-old girl take a crap in public, old men with their shirts tied up under their armpits (exposing their sagging underbellies), and dozens of Chinese guys with cameras snapping covert pictures of us (particularly Miss H and Miss J), my impressions became even more negative. The Chinese seem to have the frayed tempers of the Koreans, but lack even the most basic idea of decorum. Hence, they take pictures of foreign women without permission (and then grin crookedly at them), walk around in stained tank tops, have screaming fights with each other in public, cough and sneeze and hack without covering their mouths, and let their kids relieve themselves in public like dogs.

It was that moment, as we sat on the west side of the Temple of Heaven, watching the smoggy sunset over the heads of creepazoids taking pictures of us, that I decided that I would never set foot in Beijing again.

Got some good pictures though.

Ensuing: HONGQIAO PEARL MARKET. Best place in the world to buy wedding jewelry.