Temple of Heaven and Tiananmen Square in Beijing - March 19, 2015

We arrived in Beijing around 4 p.m. and we were met by our adorable guide, Tina.  We took a long bus ride to our hotel, The West International Trade Grand Hotel.  The hotel is nice and our rooms are lovely.

Thursday, March 19th -

We had a quick breakfast and headed out for the day.  This morning we went to the Temple of Heaven.  It is a beautiful structure.  We were quite fortunate to have nice weather and the air pollution isn't that bad.  This temple is one of the largest temple complexes in China.  Around the temple is a large park where people are doing tai chi, dancing and playing games.  I bought a little crocheted Temple of Heaven for our Christmas tree.

The Temple of Heaven, literally the Altar of Heaven, is a complex of religious buildings situated in the southeastern part of central Beijing. The complex was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for good harvest.

After this we had lunch - guess what it was Chinese food!  We then headed to the Forbidden City and Tian'an Men Square.  We have been fortunate not to have crowds of people and the weather is very nice.  I can only image this place in the summer with crowds of people.  We saw Mao's mausoleum.  I read that they raise his casket from its refrigerated chamber and put him on view in the morning and afternoon. 

 Our lunch and dinner were exactly the same.  I am continuing my passing out of little plastic dinosaurs to little kids and it is such fun.  The kids are pretty timid and I have been giving them to the mom and letting her give it to the child.  This is great fun.

At the end of the day we went to the Beijing Opera - fortunately, it was only an hour long.  It was brutal.  Painful to listen to and the story line was quite odd.  Many in the audience were asleep.  The last ten minutes was fantastic as it was a woman juggling swords - that will get your attention.  The opera was translated on the screen and some of the lines were pretty funny.  "Bosh!" was a word used and so that became our new "swear word" - "Oh bosh!"  The singing was high and whiny, but now we have seen it.  Moving on.