Bejing V - Temples, Palaces and Acrobatics

As per any tour, there are high points and low points. Considering all you are able to see in a limited time with the aid of an experienced tour guide and tour bus, sometimes it is worth a pearl factory or two.

Despite my own misgivings, the night time shows in Beijing are really outstanding. The first evening we attended an acrobatic show. Which was composed of around a half dozen mind boggling acts of physical inhumanity. It began with the two man dragons balancing on large (yoga?) balls and ended up with 15 girls in peacock dresses riding around the stage on one bicycle.
The Kung Fu show was a bit strange however. I had seen the show in 2002 and it was really good. The Shaolin monk show back then included a relatively bare stage and a series of demonstrations of their abilities and fighting styles; smashing bamboo staffs and rocks over body parts, balancing, leaning necks on sword blades to name a few.

This time around someone had decided to revamp and modernize the show. There was lights, music, a storyline and lots of modern dancing...even a love interest!!

At least they still served beer.

The Summer Palace was the residence of the emperor during the...well, the summer and is dominated the man-made Kunming Lake. Making a lake by hand seems a little extreme, but the emperor or empress needed to keep cool. There is an expression that the Chinese have about this, or at least that our tour guide has about this; "The people are the water and the emperor is the ship...the people must keep the emperor from sinking by hoisting him afloat, without a ship, the water has no meaning".

There is the really long walkway that runs along the length of the shore line where the main residence lies. This was for walking...for the emperor to take walks along. The whole thing is hand painted and every inscription and image an original. On the far side of the palace are some gardens and a stone boat which serves and an ironic comment on the fact the the empress Cixi (not a very nice woman...killed her son to keep power) diverted 30 million taels of silver(about 80mil. USD on today's market) to restore the palace for her retirement. The money was diverted from funds that were designated for the Chinese navy.

The Temple of Heaven and Earth is another example of the emperor's power and prestige.

The temple's main function was to offer the emperor a place to come once a year and pray for the harvest. The emperor was considered by the population to be the "son of heaven" and a god in his own right. The singular head of state was also responsible for rain too. On the day the emperor would visit the temple, the royal guard cleared all of the streets of Beijing

and strict silence was enforced.

These days, the grounds outside the temple have been taken over by card players. They are unusually quiet though...