The Beijing Jinian Dian and Huiyin Bi (Prayer Hall and Echo Wall), the most memorable aspect was the ancient trees and forests inside, and the mottled history.
November 26th, we traveled to Beijing for a play, departing from Shenzhen on November 27th, and leaving Beijing on November 1st. We booked flights, high-speed trains, and trains. Due to our financial situation, we chose hard seat trains. My wife specifically booked a window seat. We arrived at Beijing West Station on the afternoon of November 2nd, and booked a hotel via Speed8, which was close to the Cai Shi Kou Subway Station. When booking, we checked the surrounding attractions and found them to be relatively close.
November 27th, we arrived at Beijing West Station, purchased a Beijing one-card (with a deposit of 30 yuan that can be refunded), and took the subway to Cai Shi Kou Subway Station. This was our first experience seeing Beijing’s blue sky, and everything was filled with beauty except for the fan cooling.
We checked into the hotel and used a ride-hailing service to get to the Temple of Heaven (needing to buy tickets to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests before 4 PM). There were no available bikes, so we consulted the map. The distance was 3KM, and it took 40 minutes to cycle, fortunately my wife didn’t get angry. We bought a McDonald's to pack. Because of the limited time, we visited the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, including the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests and the Echo Wall (the entrance fee was 10 yuan, and the attraction fee was 20 yuan). The most memorable thing was the ancient trees and forests inside, and the mottled history. We also hid and played with the cats at the ticket booth and the crows roaming around. We booked tickets for the Temple of Heaven Acrobatics Show (De Yun She) at 7:30 PM.
We exited the Temple of Heaven after dark and strolled along Tianqiao South Street, seeing ‘Kyoto’s First Scorpion’ and trying the lamb shank bones of Madam Ma – they always seemed like internal organs, but they turned out to be lamb bones. We arrived on time for the De Yun She performance, scanned the QR code to get tickets, and entered the venue. The space was quite spacious, and service staff would come to ask about tea and snacks, without forcing consumption. We didn’t watch the old Guo and Xiao Guo, but mostly new performers. After the warm-up, the atmosphere gradually became more lively, but the content of the jokes sometimes felt a bit yellow and stiff. We left around 10 PM because both of us were getting tired. We took a bus for the first time at the opposite bus stop, and the seats were soft and warm.
On November 28th, we planned to take the bus to Tiananmen West to watch the flag raising ceremony. Because it was cold and freezing, we slept a little too much, and we couldn’t call a taxi, so we took the bus as planned. We didn’t know that the flag raising ceremony required road closures. Fortunately, we disembarked at Zhongshan Park West Gate after a short sprint, watched the second half of the flag raising ceremony (the time of the flag raising can be directly searched online, which is fixed according to sunrise), and squeezed to watch the military band return to the city tower.
