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. 

Tiananmen Square at Night

Here are a few shots of Tian'anmen Square at night. As you can see they light up the fountains. It is very nice.

This picture is looking across Chang An Avenue toward the square. The basket of flowers is part of the National Day decorations.

I posted some daytime pictures from the area at these links.

More Tiananmen Square
Even More Tiananmen Square

I think these pictures finish up all the sights we took in while Bob, Sue and Alyssa were visiting.

We are looking forward to our next visitors whoever you are. Just let us know a few days in advance.

The monument on the left is the Monument to the People's Heroes. It commemorates all the people who died in the revolution struggles that eventually put Mao in power in 1949.

Blue Sky Day at the Summer Palace

We took a visit to the Summer Palace on an absolutely beautiful day. A little windy but very nice.

We rode the subway out to near the end of the line. These guys were waiting outside the subway station to ferry tourists the 500 meters or so to the entrance. It wasn't that far really but it was fun and worth the 20 RMB.

This dragon appears to have 5 toes.

This is the infamous Marble Boat.

The story is interesting. You can learn more here.

Marble Boat at Wikipedia

This is the Tower of the Fragrance of the Buddha at the top of the hill.

It is also known as the Tower of Buddhist Incense.

More structures near the pavilion above.

This is a statue of the thousand-handed Guanyin Buddha.

It was cast during the reign of Wanli from 1572 to 1620.

This is what is known as Suzhou Street. It was originally build during the reign of Qianlong (1736-1795) and called Merchant's Street. The Emperor and his Emperess could walk along the shops and shop like ordinary people.

The place was burned down by the by the Anglo-French Allied Forces in 1860 and rebuilt quite recently in 1990.

This is actually Sue's photo. She happened to catch the guy standing up and looking her way from across the lake. I assume he does calligraphy of names, etc. for the tourists.

I can't imagine it on a really crowded day. In many places the sidewalks are pretty narrow and there are essentially no handrails. Fortunately the lake isn't very deep.

Tiananmen Square and Great Wall

I was in China a couple of weeks ago. Over the weekend we took in the sights at Tiananmen Square and the Great Wall at Badaling.

The CPPCC and the NPC were meeting in Beijing in the Great Hall of the People shown here. Security was especially tight at Tiananmen Square.

Links --->  CPPCC        NPC

Nobody in power wants a monk from Tibet setting themselves on fire  in such an iconic place - especially during the meetings. 

This guy is some sort of special forces or SWAT team member. Notice the fire extinguisher. All the security people seem to have them within easy reach.

Any bags you have must go through an X-ray machine and everyone is nominally screened with a wand. 

My observation was the westerners are generally waived right through security - at least middle aged men are. I did see them confiscating lighters from some young Chinese men.

The general theme of the CPPCC meeting seems to be "We're all one big happy family." judging by the English coverage in the China Daily News.

The Chinese have gone high tech for the Tiananmen displays. In the past I've seen big elaborate displays constructed sort of like billboards with big flower displays, etc. This seems to be a more permanent LED type sign with an ever changing display.

We walked on around the square. This is Qianmen gate at the south end of the square.

Learn more here Qianmen

This is one of two statues outside Mao's mausoleum.


Click to enlarge any of the pictures.

This marker is just outside the Qianmen gate. It is the zero point for all highways in China.

I guess there has to be some starting point and it reinforces the point that everything in China revolves around Beijing.






It was pretty cool and windy this day. The upside of that is nice blue skys.

The building in the background is the National Museum which recently reopened after a major refurbishment.

It is worth a visit.










Again another juxtaposition of the capitalistic entrepreneurs of China against the meeting hall of the Chinese Communist Party.

Here is Tiananmen or Gate of Heavenly Peace through which one passes to enter the Forbidden City.

On Sunday we went to the Great Wall at Badaling.

Badaling is the iconic location that gets the most visitors. All the heads of state, movie stars, etc. visit here.

Actually this isn't Badaling. I took this picture from the train on the way to Badaling. This is the Juyongguan section.

Here is a picture of the north section of the Badaling from the 4th tower of the south section.

We intended to go up the cable car to the top of the north section but we messed up and ended going to south section.

It was a pretty good walk up to this area - at least for me - I need to get in better shape.

Here's another view of the wall.

It was a pretty nice day. It was below freezing when we arrived but the sun made it bearable.

It was windy. I didn't have a hat when I arrived so I bought a "Great Wall" stocking cap when I arrived.

Everyone was greeted (maybe assaulted would be more accurate) by vendors selling hats, gloves, etc when we stepped off the train.

The 50 RMB hat turns into 10 RMB if you take a few steps away from the train before you start to negotiate.

I zoomed in on this one to show the people arriving at the north eighth tower on the cable car. You can't see the car but you can see one of the towers on the lower left of the photo.


The good thing about going the wrong way is we had the south section practically to ourselves.

Just a few people on the south section.

A view of part of the north section from a watchtower on the south section.

Did I mention it was windy.

This is the north section from the base area where the souvenir shops, restaurants, etc are located.

The train is a great way to get there. Tickets were 6 RMB each way - that's about a dollar. Train was comfortable and clean. Get to the station a little early to be sure and get a ticket. They don't sell tickets in advance. You get to see a slice of the entire spectrum of Chinese life from the train. The big buildings of the city to rural areas and everything in between.