My life and other things: Tian'anmen Square, Beihai Park and Prince Kung's Mansion

Today we visited Tian'anmen Square, Beihai Park, and Prince Gong Mansion. It was a heavy 31,000 step journey. You can find all information when you continue reading.

Tian'anmen Square

Tian'anmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace)

The Square of Heavenly Peace houses the mausoleum of Mao and the Monument for the People's Heroes. Surrounding the square are the national museum and several government buildings. In the north and the south of the square, the ending of the square is marked with two gates. The most famous of the two is Tian'anmen, or the Gate of Heavenly Peace. This gate bears the portrait of Mao.

When we arrived this morning, bus-loads of tourist where deployed at the square. There were queues everywhere. Even to cross the streets. Although it was this busy at the square, the waiting time for the mausoleum was not that long. It is not that strange as everybody is instructed to keep moving... standing still is not an option when visiting. And although visiting is free, one cannot bring any cameras or backpacks into the facility. They have to be stored, which costs money... and quite a lot.

After visiting the mausoleum, we re-entered the square after retrieving our backpacks to make some photos of the square itself. As it is all build during a specific time instance, the whole square and surrounding buildings have a concrete feel.

Beihai Park

Beihai Park, view on Dagoba

Beihai, or literally north sea, is a park with a large lake. The lake contains an island, which is home to the Dagoba and the long corridor. For 20Y you get a through ticket, which means you can visit both the park en the Dagoba.

To visit the Dagoba, you walk through the adjoined temple. This temple is not so massive as the ones we visited yesterday, although more shops are present in this temple. If you walk the guided route to the Dagoba, you pass the lot of them. Once you reach the top, you can view the full park and the neighboring Jingshan Park. The Dagoba itself is less visible from above, though now you can see the smaller shrine in front of it.

The rest of the park is all situated at the other side of the large lake. 2 kilometers from the south entrance, lies the north entrance. From here it is a measly 200 meters to another temple and the Nine Dragons Screen. The screen depicts nine dragons (^ . ^ ) on a glazed wall. There are some other sights situated further away, but we decided not to visit them as we wanted to visit another attraction.

Prince Gong Mansion

One of the Halls of the Mansion

According to websites and the Lonely Planet, this mansion is a well-preserved mansion from the Qing dynasty and is well worth visiting. For the Chinese people it must mean quite a lot, as bus loads of Chinese tourist were dropped in front of the mansion. It was almost impossible to enter the mansion.

Although the mansion and the accompanied garden are worth the visit, the rest of the information is quite lost as everything is only written down in Chinese. Maybe if you hire a tour guide, this visit will become more interesting. For us, only the sight of the mansion did not quite tell the store. It was a pity that it was raining... Still it was a lovely sight.