• The Circular Mound Altar in Beijing, China, was built in 1530 by Emperor Jiajing during the Ming Dynasty. The altar was built to host rain prayer ceremonies and Winter Solstice sacrifices.

    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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