History deep in the veins of China's buildings

Hei guys! Welcome back once again. This time I will be talking a little about the interesting buildings I saw in China. Not the new "state-of-the-art" Olympic stadium that have been so hyped about. When I was there those stadiums were still undergoing their finishing touches.

Hope you'll excuse this picture. Its quite badly taken, had some issues with my shutter speed. But I think this walkway is really impressive. Its quite dark, but do you notice the carvings on the roof and side of the walkway? Those are stories of ancient folklore carved right into this very structure!

Its in picture form so everyone could actually get a good grasp of the storyline. Its amazing how something like this could cross language barriers. You can walk all the way to the end and get mesmerized by these carvings.

Hahha....tool this picture in black and white for some "sentimental" feel. This is one of the many corridors of the Summer Palace. If you have been following this series you would remember some of the gorgeous outdoor pictures I took there.

Imagine what went down there centuries ago....

Flowers are in full bloom. A princess strolls through the walkway while admiring the beautiful flowers. She giggles in delight as a gust of wind suddenly blew, lifting a bunch of leaves from the ground. Her giggles of joy seemed to bring life to the garden, lifting the atmosphere.

Well, that was MY interpretation of what it would be like....



The Temple of Heaven. If you were to describe heaven as a wide place, this place definitely fits the description. This place is HUGE. One thing that all ancient Chinese architecture have in common is that everything is symmetrically and systematically aligned. You will start at the entrance which leads straight to another entrance which leads to the courtyard...

You can even check out the layout of Beijing. You can see one obvious line running through the center. Its for some feng shui purposes. Must have worked, looking at how well they are doing right now =)

A little on this place. Last time, the people of China would come to this place and offer prayers and sacrifices to please the Gods, and hope that they would obtain a fruitful harvest.

This is St. Sophie Church located in Haarbin, further up north in China and its VERY cold. When I was there, temperatures was in the -30 degree zone! This church was built way back under Russian influence. Haarbin is quite close to Russia so you can find lots of "Russian" souvenir shops there. They have really cute dolls, the kind that you can open to find another on inside. I'll show you a pic later.

This church actually reminded me of the movie Marry Poppins where this old lady would be selling 'bird feed' for a tuppence. Hence the song "Tuppence a Bag".

A wall?? Who takes pictures of walls?? Hhahahah!!! Well this wall really caught my attention. Look at its texture. There are so many lines here and there. At that point of time with the light shining on it, that wall looked really.....nice.

It actually made me reflect on the suffering people in China had to go through back in the days. So all those cracks and lines, to me speaks of their suffering and hardships.






This is actually a restaurant. (Honestly, I am NOT sure....perhaps its a temple, its quite a while back so I'm not sure) Its the first place in Beijing where I tasted Peking Duck! The duck was really good, so good I was too busy eating that I did not have the opportunity to take any pictures.

That goes as well for the rest of my trips. I don't take many pictures of food because I am to busy eating it. Hope you enjoyed this post!