Adventure in Tian Tan, Jing Shan and Bei Hai Park

Bei Hai Park. And this is my german colleague who I forgotten his name :p the white temple is quite famous, but I also forgot the name...hehehe
see all photos »

We spent half a day visited the Imperial Palace. Yes, I visited Imperial Palace again, but this time with Li Jun (R&D director) and the german colleague. The german is very generous, he insisted to pay the entrance fee for us and also treated us lunch. After Imperial Palace, we visited Bei Hai Park and Jing Shan Park which is nearby the palace. At Jing Shan, there is a big golden Buddha statue at the top of the mountain and from there, you can see the ancient architecture (Imperial Palace) merged witht eh modern residential area.

Big Buddha Statue at Jing Shan Temple
see all photos »

Initially Li Jun wanted to bring us to have lunch in a very unique restaurant in BeiHai Park, but we have missed the lunch hour and they have closed for rest. So we took trishaw ride back to Imperial Palace where Li Jun parked his car. The german colleague asked me to ride with him as he couldn't understand Mandarin and afraid the paddler will bring him somewhere else...hahaha, quite true. So we have steam boat for lunch in the hot summer day! I loved the "suan yang ruo" (dipping the sliced mutton in the hot soup just for 1 or 2 minutes) and eat with sesame sauce. I like the freeze tofu too.

The merging of ancient palace with modern houses
see all photos »

After lunch Li Jun drove us to Tian Tan, the imperial shrine that used for praying to God and holding good festivals. There are total of 4 imperial shrines, one for praying to God, one for deaths and the other two...not too sure...hihihi. Tian tan is famous because the round wall in there is made of some material that can create great echo of sound waves (Tian Tan has round architecture). It's said that if u talk at one corner, the message can be heard at the other corner clearly. They called it echo wall (hui ying pi). Somehow, we tried it several times, doesn't seem to have such effect (hmmm ??). However, there is a gathering ground somewhere in the big Tian tan shrine, where it's believed to be the greatest echo area in the whole shrine. When you stand at different level of ground, when you shout, you can hear different frequency of echo clearly, it's very interesting. When I stood at the top level (the 9th stairs), the echo is really strong, like coming from all corners. May be this is the phenomena of echo that make Tian tan unique, and not that talking to the round wall like the instruction in pamphlet. hehehe.