Temple of Heaven

Eventually my daughter will upload the pictures we took and I can link to them. At which point I will be able to show you a picture of a man with a very large brush doing writing on the pavement in water with a giant brush. I don't know the text that he was writing, though.

This took place in the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, and was our first destination on the morning after we arrived. The temple grounds are a large public park, with some old structures on it of historical interest. There were people in the park also doing Tai Chi, (they say it as taiji), sword dance, ballroom dancing and something resembling hackysack. A little bit of badminton also. I've been doing taiji for 10 years myself, so I watched this with great interest.

Our tour guide said that the calligraphy practice was considered healthful and useful in preventing stroke in older citizens. In China the official retirement age is now 50 for males and 45 for females. I think they are trying to get the younger folks employed.

Which reminds me, in China, because of the One Child Policy, there are 6 adults to care for every child, two parents and four grandparents. This makes the child known as The Little Emperor or Empress. Of course there is a social welfare problem, since that one child is ultimately going to be responsible for caring for all 6 of those adults. Which was mentioned to us by multiple tour guides.

All the groups I saw doing Taiji were doing it to music. I've never seen Taiji done to music in the US, and I've seen it done by Chinese expats a lot. There's no instruction either, that I could see. The leader just starts doing it and everyone else joins in and follows along as best they can.

Anyway, the Temple of Heaven was built as the place for the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties to appeal to the gods for good harvests and blessings. The parts that we visited consisted of a great mound, paved in marble and some other stone, and a temple. In the center of the mound was a round marble stone, raised slightly above the central platform. This is where the Emperor stood to make his appeals to the Gods.

The Ming dynasty was founded in 1388, and the third Ming Emperor moved their capital to Beijing from Nanjing. The Manchu's of the Qing dynasty took over in 1644 and ruled until abdication of the last emperor in 1911. These guys weren't exactly ancients, but they felt the need to build this temple and come out to it every year to pray for the harvest.

In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond notes that most rulers feel the pressure to protect their underlings from natural disaster. The conditions for agriculture in China are pretty reliable, otherwise there wouldn't be so many people there, but there's some variation. So this is method of self-aggrandizement, really.

The temple is the first place we ran into a characteristic feature of historical Chinese architecture -- high, wooden thresholds. These are to keep out the evil spirits, evil earth spirits to be exact. However, our guide pointed out that in a traditional farmhouse, such a threshold would also keep out the rain and dirt.

And as these things go, the higher the threshold, the more status the place.

Interestingly, we were assailed by street vendors during the 1 block walk to the gate of the park but not once we entered the park. I don't know how they manage to keep them out of the park and let all the other people in.