Midyear 2007 in Beijing

This is my first trip to Beijing, the capital of China. One of my main itenary is to visit the Great Wall, and that makes me really excited.

Beijing city is actually very easy to navigate. The roads are generally of a north-south and east-west directions. So I thought that seemed easy to walk around with a map on hand. But I was wrong. The main streets are very long and wide (a 12-lane road, 5 lanes for traffic in each direction, plus 2 outer lanes for bicycles only is consider common). So the distance from one junction to another on a map, is actually quite a long walk.

Arriving early in the morning, a Singaporean friend I made on the flight to Beijing gave me a ride from the airport to the city. I got off at Dongzhimen Nei Dajie, which is approximately at the north-east of the city center. (I took reference of the subway circle line). I decided visited the Lama Temple, which is, I thought, quite near to where I was.

Lama Temple (YongHe Gong) is originally a residence of a Qing dynasty prince, whom later became emperor. The building was later converted to be a Tibetan Buddhist temple till now.

The compound is huge, with one building after another building as you walk through it. One of the last buildings has a 18-m tall standing Maitreya Buddha, carved out of a single trunk of sandalwood.

Visited the Temple of Heaven (TianTan) in the afternoon. I was late. The entrance to the Park (TianTan Gongyuan) was still open, but the temple buildings closed at 6pm. The park was very big, and has a rich collection of plants and trees within its compound. I walked at least 30mins before I get a glimse of the TianTan building.