China Tour late July 2011 - Day 1-Beihai Park, Tea Houses, Hutongs

We arrived in Beijing the day before our Viking River Cruise was to begin.  So, with some suggestions our tour guide left in a note for us so we set out on our own. We mapped out our plan a bit ambitious we later discovered. We decided to go to Beihai Park first.  Beihai Park is an imperial garden to the northwest of the Forbidden City in Beijing. First built in the 10th century, it is among the largest of Chinese gardens, and contains numerous historically important structures, palaces and temples. Since 1925, the place has been open to the public as a park. The park surrounds Beihai Park Lake, whose island has the White Pagoda.

                                                                Entrance to the Park                          

Sitting room in palace.  Chinese palaces are many separate buildings connected by gardens and walk ways.

The Hall of Great Bliss and Anticipation - The hall is a great work in extant structure of the Ming Dynasty, founded during the Wanli period. Worshiped here are the Buddha of Three Worlds (World of Past, Present and Future) and the eighteen arhats, which in Buddhism signifies a spiritual practitioner who has realized certain high stages of attainment.

The Nine Dragon Wall lies north of the Five-Dragon Pavilion. It was built in 1402 and is one of three walls of its kind in China. It is made of glaze bricks of seven-colors. Nine complete dragons playing in the clouds decorate both sides of the wall.

 The old woman was doing Chinese calligraphy with water and a large paint brush on the sidewalk.

Beihai Lake whose Island has the White Pagoda, which occupies the site of Kublai Khan's palace. 

                    

                                                           Starbucks is everywhere

                              The walkway was lined with Tea Houses and other places to eat.

                                                      The beautiful Lotus blossoms

We took the tunnel walkway to get back across the street and this old gentleman was panhandling and willing to take a picture.

We went to Hutongs, which has narrow streets and alleys, most commonly associated with.  In Beijing, hutongs are alleys formed by lines of siheyuan, traditional courtyard residences. Many neighbourhoods were formed by joining one siheyuan to another to form a hutong, and then joining one hutong to another. The word hutong is also used to refer to such neighbourhoods.  It is 700 years old.

We had a tour on a rickshaw by a very funny guy who spoke pretty good English.  The place with the red doors is a Mahjong House and the men in the street are having a game.

                                  The wheel behind the short post was used to crush wheat in the old days.

                            School yard- This is our tour guide and Myra in the rickshaw .

 This was supposedly a general's house noted by the two poles coming out of the door.  All of this information is according to our tour guide.

                                                Very narrow alley ways.

We ended our tour and started for our next sight when it started to rain.  We got a taxi just before the heavens opened up so we went back to the hotel and by the time the rains stopped it was too late to go to the zoo so I did  not get to see the Giant Pandas.  I guess it will have to wait till next visit.