Besides visiting The Great Wall, while in Beijing,we also visited the Forbidden City, and you can take a virtual tour for yourself here. After several hours of visiting the many temples and being inspired by the amazing patterns and textures, we stood in Tiananmen Square, this was a restricted area as the 17th Party Congress was being held that week.
This was an indication of what will happen for the Olympics next year. This is a very important focus as we found out on visiting The Temple of Heaven.
As we entered the Temple area, we were greeted with a huge floral display of the Olympic rings and there was another Olympics display as we left, at the other end of the park.
There were shops selling memorabilia for The Summer games of 2008 One World One Dream being the slogan for the games
The Temple of Heaven was one of my favorite sites that we visited in Beijing. There was a tranquility in both the setting and the temple. The detailed art work was so rich and varied
The Taoist temple is set in a beautiful park. This was one thing that there were plenty of in Beijing and very much part of Beijing life.
On our first day in Beijing, Kath & I visited the Ritan park, where a choir was practicing in Russian, a woman doing tai chi, a painter was set up with an easel, painting in Monet style and I had my first taste of authentic Sichuan cuisine. We returned there on the Saturday with Kath, Richard and Angus and Cate our niece and nephew.( Our main reason for the visit) The park was again a place of the people, children were playing, kites being flown and there was the great restaurant to lunch in.
This greenery is like a haven in a city of grey. We were called the fair weather mascots by our hosts: although there was plenty of air pollution, we did see some blue sky and experienced one of the few sunsets that Beijing has.
I really love the life force and enthusiasm you have captured in your images. They are the kinds that invite us to step through into another place, Each of us can choose to remain a bystander or evolve to be a more active participant in our lives. To visualize what you would like to do and where leads to actually feeling and then doing it.
Thanks Lara,
Meant to tell you I met an fellow Angel Inuitive on the plane to Sydney and Doreen and Steven were on that plane and out plane to the USA, so got to say hi at the Airport.
Hey, I’m not sure if my last comment went through, so sorry if this is a repost. I was just saying that I stumbled on here through a photo search and your pics are really great!
China, man. That’s a weird place. Especially in terms of our relationship with them. They trade with us like lunatics but have an innate distaste for capitalism? We fought their enemies in WWII but now they’re some of our closest friends? It’s a constant back-and-forth with the Middle Kingdom and that’s kind of creepy.