A tomb, tea, and a temple...

A tomb...

Just outside of Beijing are 13 tombs containing the remains of most of the Ming emperors.  When I think tomb I think graveyard or crypt or something similar...not the case when it comes to the Ming Tombs.

The Ming Tombs actually take up quite a bit of space and have more than one building.  You enter through a gate and then walk through a courtyard and come across the main hall - pictured above.  We visited the Chang Ling tomb.  The main hall has been converted into a bit of a museum...including a statue of emperor Yongle who is buried within the tomb.

After you pass through the main hall you come to another courtyard.  Within the courtyard is an archway which leads you to the Soul Tower.

One would assume by the name that the Soul Tower building is where the emperor is buried.  In reality, the emperor is buried somewhere beneath a very large hill behind the soul tower.  The exact location of the emperor is kept secret and apparently anybody who shared the location would be buried alive.

One of the coolest things about the tombs were the bricks around the Soul Tower.  Based on the markings these have been confirmed as original bricks so they date back to the 1400s...or, the tour guide told us this and we believed her since we can't read the local language.

Tea...
We were able to participate in a traditional tea ceremony.  You go into this little room and this very nice lady explains all of the tea and how to prepare it and what it is good for and all sorts of other useful information. 

We tasted about six different types of tea.  We had green, black, wulong, jasmine, and chrysanthemum.  They all had very distinct and different tastes and I actually enjoyed them all.  The best part of the tea ceremony is that you got to sip the tea from these insanely tiny teacups...

The chrysanthemum tea came a couple of different ways.  The most interesting was like this:

That is actual tea steeping from that flower.  It was really unique and would make for a fun way to serve tea to guests.

A temple...
My last day in Beijing was actually a holiday so the office was closed.  My flight didn't leave until later in the day so my friend and I walked up to the Temple of Heaven. 

The temple itself was a big round building.  It is where the emperors would come and pray to heaven for good harvests.  The building above is actually the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests.

The most interesting part about visiting the Temple of Heaven were the goings-on in the park that surrounds it.  There are loads of people doing various sorts of exercise.  Some were doing tai chi, some were playing a game that sort of resembled hacky sack, and some were dancing.  The dancers were mainly groups of older people that were dancing to music and following along to the instructions of a lead dancer or instructor.  One group, that was quite large, had a guy instructing them via a bull-horn...he appeared to be pretty strict but they all seemed to enjoy themselves.  The scene struck me as so completely opposite of what we would see in a park in the US.  If there was dancing going on it'd likely be younger kids...I doubt it would be organized...there certainly wouldn't be costumes...and I suspect a guy yelling at them with a bull-horn is really unlikely.