Taimiao

On Sunday afternoon, Margot and I took a walk down toward Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City. We decided to check out the park just east of the entrance to the Forbidden City called Taimiao.

Like the Forbidden City this was built in the 1400s. It was an imperial temple for offering sacrifices and ancestor worship. This building is the Halberd Gate.

This is the Hall for the Worship of Ancestors. Notice the three-tiered platform that means it has a lot of status.

The entire complex was renamed the Beijing Working People's Cultural Palace in 1949.

This is an arrangement of bells and drums inside the hall.

Here you get another view of the scale of the bells and the hall.

The wooden ancestral tablets disappeared during the Cultural Revolution.

The center is dominated by a large painting with a number of imperial dragons.

For more info about Taimiao see the following site. Taimiao

The columns are huge. I guess about 6 feet in diameter.

These 2 guys asked Margot if she would pose with them. After they took turns getting their picture taken with her I asked them to pose for me.

These guys were having fun posing for a picture outside one of the halls.

This picture shows the relationship of Taimiao to the Forbidden City. Taimiao is in the lower right hand part of the picture. If you click to enlarge you can see Mao's picture on the Tian'anmen Gate in the lower center of the picture.

This is a picture of the gates at the back of the complex.

This picture is at the back of the complex looking toward the Forbidden City.

Here are two pictures looking at the tower at the southeast corner of the Forbidden City. That is the moat along the wall in the foreground.

Here is a close up of the tower. Margot  and I couldn't agree on which picture of the tower we liked better so I included both.

On the way back we walked through a quiet park that parallels Chang'An Ave. This is gate along the edge of a park.

We saw these two signs in the park. They are nice signs but I have no idea what they mean.

Maybe one of my Chinese friends will offer a better translation.

This picture is looking down through the park. I imagine this scene will be just beautiful in spring.

The name of the park is Changpuhe Park.

Here is one more Christmas decoration picture. We passed by this hotel on the way home.

Here is a picture of entrance to the Beijing Hotel. The decorations in front says xinchun kuaile. Kuaile means happy. My translator says the xinchun refers to the first 10 to 20 days following the Chinese New Year. Seems a little early for that but maybe they are covering both Jan 1 and the lunar new year with one decoration.

Click here for more history on the Beijing hotel (scroll to the bottom)  Beijing Hotel

Here is another shot of the Tian'anmen Gate from the other day. It is from about the same spot as the shots at this link.  Tian'anmen