Chinese History
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Biking Around the Xián City Wall
I really love traveling internationally. There is so much to see, do and learn. It’s so fun being in other cultures and seeing how other people live. The most amazing part of international travel is that there are TONS of things you can do in other countries that you really can’t do in the US. Like climb around 12th century ruins, explore castles and actually SEE ancient mixed with modern. It’s really great. When we were in China, we got to have a pretty fun experience. I was a little iffy about it at first. I mean, I wanted to do it, but my thought was, “Okay, we’re going to…
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Temple of Heaven: Circular Mound Altar
After we finished up at the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests we decided to wander around the grounds as the sun went down. We hadn’t done a ton of research as our trip to China wasn’t planned far enough in advance to do more than list places that looked interesting, so we didn’t really know what all was on the grounds on the Temple of Heaven. We saw people heading through a gate opposite from where we had entered the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests area and decided to see where they were going. We had no idea what was there and were excited about being ‘surprised’. The first thing we…
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Temple of Heaven: The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests
If you ever go to Beijing, one of the places you’ll want to visit is the Temple of Heaven. It’s a 15-minute drive south of the Forbidden City and close to several other areas of interest. We did a circuit where we visited the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and then the Temple of Heaven in one day and felt like we were able to enjoy ourselves at each one without feeling rushed. The Temple of Heaven began construction in 1406 and was completed in 1420, just 4 years before the Yongle Emperor died. The complex is made up of two sections, the inner section and the outer section, covering 660 acres. The outer…
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Visiting the Great Wall of China
I’ll tell you now, before I get into my post, that this post has a LOT of pictures. I hope you enjoy my journey along the top of the Great Wall of China! To pick up where my last post left off, after we hung up with Kevin we wandered around the Beijing Olympic Stadium for a while. The tour company called us several times, asking if we wanted them to come get us, where we were, what had upset us (haha, that one was funny) and if we could work out a deal. We weren’t about to tell them where we were and we definitely didn’t want to attempt another…
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Kuan Yin Shrine and the Legend of Miao Shan
The Kuan Yin Shrine in Bangkok is dedicated to a Goddess whose tragic story exemplifies the virtues of kindness, compassion, sacrifice and forgiveness.
