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| Dongzhong Street |
East Gate Plaza is the service apartment we stayed in during our Beijing vacation. It's located along Dongzhong Street in the Dongcheng district of Beijing. It's around 45 minutes to an hour away from the Beijing Capital Airport 2. The area reminded me of the inner streets of the Makati CBD (Central Business District), except with wider roads. It felt like a nice area to live in. It was clean, had small shops and food places, near the mall and subway station, and, overall, felt like safe place. If ever (though, I doubt it) I get sent to Beijing for long-term work I'd like to stay in this area.
To get to the Temple of Heaven we rode Line 2 from Dongzhimen until Chongwenmen station. We then transferred to Line 5 and rode the train until Tiantan Dongmen station. The Temple of Heaven is also known as Tiantan Park. The word "dong" means
east and "men" means
gate. Interestingly enough, getting off the Tiantan Dongmen station and going through Exit A leads you to the east gate of the Tiantan Park, or Temple of Heaven. Clever, huh?
The Temple of Heaven is the largest existing sacrificial temple in China and is found in the southern part of Beijing. Other temples of the same kind include the Temple of Earth (Ditan) found in the north, Temple of the Sun (Ritan) in the east, and Temple of the Moon (Yuetan) in the west.
The Temple of Heaven is a really really huge park! You'll be there along with flocks of people but the crowds are usually concentrated around the areas where most of the structures are. You can walk through the
Seventy-two Corridors and visit the
Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. Go into the
Imperial Vault of Heaven and test whether it is possible to talk to another person standing on another part of the wall through the
Echo Wall. The
Circular Mound Altar is another popular structure which you can visit.
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| Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests |
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| The mandatory couple shot |
You can go to all those sights and take in all the history and culture you can, but, afterward, try and escape from the crowd and enjoy the rest of the park. The Temple of Heaven has thousands of trees, some of which are more than 1000 years old.
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| A lot of the trees in the park looked like this |
I really enjoyed strolling around with the sunny but cool and windy weather. If I could I would have laid down under the shade of some trees and read a book or gone to sleep.
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| I envy the girl reading in the middle of nowhere |
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| We were wondering what these balls were. They kept falling from the sky whenever the wind blew. After some Googling, these are, apparently, cypress seed balls. We thought they were poop balls falling from the trees or something. |
It's also interesting to do some people watching. Lots of candid photo ops.
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| A long chain of kites |
Jex and I went back to the apartment since we couldn't find his dad and sister due to miscommunication. After a Happy Lemon and Subway meal we headed to Wangfujing.
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| The Wangfujing Bookstore is a whole building! Even bigger than the main branch of National Bookstore in Cubao. |
I didn't know what else was in Wangfujing, but I did read around the internet that you can shop there. The more interesting part of Wangfujing, which I was looking forward to, was the Snack Street.
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| Going into Wangfujing snack street |
I seriously should have taken more photos, but it was a very crowded street so it wasn't so easy. Using my point and shoot could have been easier, but the photos wouldn't have turned out as good as I would have wanted. Add the fact that I hate using flash, photos from my point and shoot would have probably just looked either grainy or blurry. The low light setting really allowed me to take advantage of my 50mm on my DSLR, though, so I'm pretty happy.
The street was lined with food stalls, left and right, from the usual grilled corn on the cob, kebabs, candied fruits and haw to the exotic deep fried scorpions, water roach, and starfish.
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| Grilled corn on the cob |
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| Roasted chestnuts or castañas as we call it in the Philippines |
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| Takoyaki is a Japanese pan-fired ball-shaped dumpling made of batter containing baby octopus or squid and vegetables |
I really wanted to try something I haven't eaten before, something exotic, something challenging. But, I wasn't in a very adventurous mood that time so I only shared an order of takoyaki with wasabi sauce with Jex.
If you think you have an iron stomach you should try scorpions on a stick. The scorpions are actually still alive and moving while already stuck to the sticks. When you order one they deep fry it for you before serving. I wasn't too happy to see that they also served sea horses and starfish on a stick, though.
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| Care for scorpions or seahorse on a stick? |
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| How about some bugs on a stick? |
We didn't stay too long in the snack street and went out to the main street after grabbing a bite or two and looking around. The main Wangfujing street, just like Qianmen, is a wide street closed off from vehicular traffic. You'll see different popular brand stores, like Zara, Gap and even Hermès, as well as other local stores that I'm not familiar with.
Just like the first day, day two ended in shopping, except I didn't buy anything.
Watch out for part 4!
Beijing Series
