China 2012: Temple of Heaven (Tiantan park)

We arrived in Beijing on september 13th from Guangzhou. It took us some time to find the hotel located in one the hutongs, close to the forbidden city.
We spent the afternoon to have a rest and tour the neighborhood to see where to eat on the evenings.

We decided not to visit the great wall and forbidden city in two days, but to space out these two visits by one day at least.
The first place we went was the Temple of Heaven.

I have to admit, I enjoyed a lot the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests and the colors of the buildings.

Here below some pictures of the Temple of Heaven place:

The way to access the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests

 

On this day, there were chinese elders singing songs. Were they traditional or 'communist' songs ? I couldn't say, but the songs sounded like nice. I did record a short video of this moment. Later on, I will publish it on my YouTube account and share it with you.
Actually, I noticed retired people use to have a lot of social activities like dancing, singing, playing some soft sports in public parks. By this way, they still have a social life and sport activity. We should try to copy that system, I'm sure our elders could have a better life than spending their time in front of TV at home or in retirement home.

Anyway...

Here below are different views of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests

On this sunny day, it was not so easy to take photographies and avoiding the sun. This can explain colors are not all the same on these pictures.

a detail of the Hall

For further information about the place and its history, I shall recommend you to follow this wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Heaven where these two excerpts are from:

History

The temple complex was constructed from 1406 to 1420 during the reign of the Yongle Emperor, who was also responsible for the construction of the Forbidden City in Beijing. The complex was extended and renamed Temple of Heaven during the reign of the Jiajing Emperor in the 16th century. The Jiajing Emperor also built three other prominent temples in Beijing, the Temple of Sun (日壇)in the east, the Temple of Earth (地壇)in the north, and the Temple of Moon (月壇)in the west . The Temple of Heaven was renovated in the 18th century under the Qianlong Emperor. Due to the deterioration of state budget, this became the last large-scale renovation of the temple complex in the imperial time.
The temple was occupied by the Anglo-French Alliance during the Second Opium War. In 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion, the Eight Nation Alliance occupied the temple complex and turned it into the force's temporary command in Beijing, which lasted for one year. The occupation desecrated the temple and resulted in serious damage to the building complex and the garden. Robberies of temple artifacts by the Alliance were also reported. With the downfall of the Qing, the temple complex was left unmanaged. The neglect of the temple complex led to the collapse of several halls in the following years.^[2]
In 1914, Yuan Shikai, then President of the Republic of China, performed a Ming prayer ceremony at the temple, as part of an effort to have himself declared Emperor of China. In 1918 the temple was turned into a park and for the first time open to the public.
The Temple of Heaven was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998 and was described as "a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design which simply and graphically illustrates a cosmogony of great importance for the evolution of one of the world’s great civilizations..." as the "symbolic layout and design of the Temple of Heaven had a profound influence on architecture and planning in the Far East over many centuries."^[3]

Buildings and layout

Panorama with the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests in the center, viewed from the South

The Temple grounds cover 2.73 km² of parkland and comprises three main groups of constructions, all built according to strict philosophical requirements:

• The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (祈年殿) is a magnificent triple-gabled circular building, 36 meters in diameter and 38 meters tall, built on three levels of marble stone base, where the Emperor prayed for good harvests. The building is completely wooden, with no nails. The original building was burned down by a fire caused by lightning in 1889. The current building was re-built several years after the incident.