Blossoms at Behai Park in Beijing April 5, 2010
Spring has arrived here in Beijing and the fruit trees are blooming. The flowers are showing the first signs of color and the willows and aspens are leafing out.
It
has been a few days since I’ve had time to write anything down. I’m now with the group of timber frame
enthusiasts and we’ve been jumping from site to site several times a day. By the time I get back to the hotel
after dinner I’m worn out. At the
moment we’re on a bus for a couple hours going to a temple near Tianjin so I
may actually have some time to catch up on writing.
The first structure you see as you enter Jing Shan Park from the south is Qiwang Tower, a relatively new building having been built in 1750. That makes this building merely decades older than the United States rather than the usual centuries.
To this point the group has been visiting sites I have been to on several prior occasions so I’ve not seen much new. At the same time it’s completely new to them and it is fun to see their reactions when they first see the things I’ve come to appreciate. I can fully understand their feeling of awe and wonder. The timber work in China is of a scale and complexity unprecedented in the west.
Members of our group examining cast bronze bells in the pavilion pictured above. Normally it is not open to the public but Shen Fang, the director of the park complex, opened it for our group as a professional courtesy.
On Thursday, our group was joined by my teacher and friend, Mr Ma, and once again he arranged visits to areas of the Forbidden City I had not seen before. Rather than try to describe everything, I’ll just post photos and let you see it too. The area we visited is to the west side of the main axis of the city and closed to visitors so it was quite a privilege to be there.
Mr Li (left with hands up) explaining the finer points of timber architecture. Mr Li is the Executive Director of the entire Palace Museum (Forbidden City). Looking on is Mr Ma (right in glasses), a noted expert on Chinese historic architecture, who arranged our behind the scenes tour with Mr Li.
In the extreme northwest corner of the Forbidden City is a courtyard built for a prince, whose name escapes me in the Tibetan style of architecture. This three tiered temple with numerous elements from that region awaits restoration at some later date.
Well, the ride is bumpy and I don’t want to tempt fate on motion sickness so I’ll pack it in for the time being.
On April 5 it was clear enough that I was finally able to get a photo of the Forbidden City from the crest of Jing Shan (aka Coal Hill). This photo is looking south over the main north gate in the foreground all the way to Wumen on the extreme south of the complex. In the extreme left of the photo about halfway up you can see the the temple pictured above.
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