Fahaisi Market and Temple

I started off with this picture just because it is cute. More on the squirrel later.

We took a tour of Fahai Temple, the Eunuch Tombs and the Fahaisi street market a month or so ago.





More on the temple later but to get there you have to walk through a huge street market. This market is organized every Sunday morning.

This guy is preparing noodles.

Here is how it starts out. He swings the noodles around and doubles and redoubles and doubles again until they are thin and ready to cook.

When they are the right size they go in the pot of boiling water next to the table.

All sorts of vegetables and fruits.

These are onions. As you can see not a lot of effort has been expended on washing them. They are pretty much just like they came out of the dirt.

These are apricots and cherries.

Here a father and son discuss the vegetables.

More vegetables.

You can buy all sorts of other stuff there, also. I guess these are table cloths or dish towels maybe.

Someone in our group bought a pair of shoes. These are handmade. Total cost - 13 RMB or about $2.20.

There was live poultry for sale. Also, dead poultry - check out the upper right hand corner.

At least you know it is fresh. Is a pigeon considered poultry?

Click to enlarge.

These are turtle eggs, I think. I always joke that every unusual food in China is either good for a woman's skin or makes a man strong - if you know what I mean. I don't remember what turtle eggs do.

Fish is available, also.

This isn't a particularly prosperous part of Beijing so saving money on food is important.

These are various fungi or mushrooms. I'm pretty sure the dark ones are mu'er or wood ear fungus.

I thought this was interesting. It is known as beggar's chicken. What does a beggar not have? A pot. The chicken is wrapped in paper and mud and then roasted in the oven which is part of the table. You can see 3 of them sitting on the front of the table and discarded wrapper behind. The big black letters are Zhongguo ming chi or China Famous Food. The red letters are jiao hua ji or Beggar's Chicken. You are on your own for the rest of it.

All sorts of services are available. However, putting the athlete's foot cure next to the vegetables did not enhance the vegetable seller's market position - in my opinion.

Would you go to this guy for dentures or tooth repair. I don't think I would, either.

Again, the dentist is next to the shoe repair guy.

We did have one of these for lunch. Deep fried dough with beef (as far as I know) inside.

What's in the basket you ask?

A young child.

This was the spice vendor. That is cinnamon in the first box and dried Chinese dates behind.

Garlic anyone?

After the market and on the way to the temple we passed by this set of beehives.

Here you can see the beekeeper taking out the racks to extract the honey.

I understood that the beekeeper and his wife were from another province and come to Beijing in the summer to raise their bees.

This is the hut that they live in. Pretty much like camping. There is a public toilet about 50 yards away with flush toilets and running water.

Those are jars of honey for sale on the table. Margot bought one.

Back to the squirrels. Just outside the temple there were half a dozen young women with their pet squirrels. Sort of a squirrel club. I guess they get together at different locations each weekend to compare notes and let the squirrels play with their friends.

The little girl was part of our tour group.

The Fahai temple was built around 1440. One of the emperor's favorite eunuchs raised the money. You may remember these stele from the earlier post. They are almost always present at important temples.

This Buddha figure is in the outer hall. The temple is famous for its murals on the inside walls. However, the room is kept completely dark to prevent the murals from fading. They give you flashlights to look at them but you can only see a small portion at a time.

No photography is allowed. Sorry.

Learn more here and see a photo of the part of the mural. Fahaisi

We were told that this is a white bark pine tree and it is reputed to be very old. I had never heard of such a thing. A little research on the internet tells me it is known in the west as lacebark pine, Pinus bungeana. It is not the same as the whitebark pine in the U.S.

This is the site of the Eunuch's tomb. Guess what? It was closed for renovations that started just a couple of days earlier. The tour organizer will give us a half-price discount for the tour if we will go back in December when it is completed.