Kevin Lee, the same tour guide as the Ming Tomb and Great Wall tour, picked me up this morning from the hotel. It was great to see his smiling face sticking outside the door of the bus cheerfully yelling my name. Today we were joined by Silvia, a French woman, and Vanessa from South Africa.
We tackled the Llama temples including the largest wooden Buddha in the world. These wooden Buddhas are made from a single piece of wood. The amazing fact about the Buddha we saw today is that it was over 100 ft. high and at least 30 ft. thick, all from a single Tibetan sandlewood tree. The tree was a gift from the Buddhist Llama of Tibet when the emperor decided (in a politically astute move) to build a Llama temple in Beijing. (Sorry they only allowed pictures of the outside.)
The pandas in the zoo were full of wonder. They were unusually active and of course were amazingly photogenic.
The Emperor’s Summer Palace could easily be a spot of repose for an entire day in the appropriate season. During the late fall it was still beautiful, especially the over 14,000 paintings and the obvious thought put into the layout.
The famous stone barge was built as a symbol of the unsinkable durability of the dynasty, but even the tour guide pointed out that it didn’t float so technically couldn’t be sunk.
After the Summer Palace I was dropped off at the Forbidden City for a chilly stroll through the many corridors and palace temples. Beijing is in major restorative mode, so the largest temples or empirical halls were tarped and under construction.
Strolling toward and eventually out the main Tiananmen Gate one can’t help but be taken aback by the density of military and police guards, not to mention to typical marching icons.
The Tiananmen incident is still a very soar spot for the powers that be and overt control of the area is clearly evident.
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