The Sacred Way, the Ming Tombs, Beijing

The Sacred Way, Ming Tombs, Beijing, had long been on my list of places that I really wanted to see in China. The Sacred Way, (or the road leading to Heaven) leads to the Ming Tombs, which are about 3 miles away. My daughter and I visited two of the Ming Tombs in 2014, the blogs for those visits can be seen here:http://poppysplace-poppy.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-ming-tombs-chang-ling.html and here:http://poppysplace-poppy.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-ming-tombs-ding-ling-tomb.html

The Shengong Shengde Stele Pavilion, which holds the Merits and Virtue stele, which is six metres high and mounted on the back of a Bixi.

The Bixi supporting the Stele,  this weighs about 50 tons!!

Carved dragon faces at the top of the Stele.

Surrounding the stele pavilion are four marble pillars, each 10 metres high, decorated with 41 dragons, and topped with mythical creatures. 

A close up of one of the mythical creatures on top of the marble pillars.

Our first proper sight of the animals, and apart from a few people we had the place to ourselves, which was wonderful :) There are 12 pairs of animals and 6 pairs of humans lining the route.

The crouching Lion, complete with this gorgeous little girl :)

The standing Lion, I read somewhere that the pairs of animals crouching and standing up represent the day and night shift, with the shifts changing at midnight.

The Lion represents awesome solemnity, because of their ferocity.

The crouching Xiezni, a mythical beast resembling a goat with a single horn.

The standing Xiezni.

The Xiezni is said to keep the evil spirits away.

The prone Camel,

The standing camel.

The camels and elephants are included as they represent dependable transport for covering large areas including deserts or tropics.

The prone Elephant

The standing elephant

The crouching Qilin, another mythical beast.

The standing Quilin.

The Quilin is an auspicious symbol.

The prone horse 

The standing horse.

The horse is the Emperor's mount and is indispensable.

Above and below are the Military Officers.

Above and below are the Civilian Officers.

Above and below are the Ministers of Merit.

All the pairs of statues are identical, apart from the one above - we noticed that he is smiling, we decided that he had been naughty in some way!!

The Dragon and Phoenix gate, marking the end of this section.

The Sacred way goes all the way to the Ming Tombs, but I am not sure if parts of it have been incorporated into the nearby road system.

Neither my daughter nor I could resist sitting on the elephants paw :)

I was thrilled to have finally managed to visit the Sacred Way, we had a lovely morning :)

Houhai - Hutong doors and doorways

Our walk through the Hutong's as mentioned in my last blog.

As we started our walk leaving the crowds behind us I think we both visibly relaxed. No cars, hardly any people and the blissful silence which belied the fact that we were in the heart of one of the busiest cities in the world.

Many Chinese people still live in the fascinating Hutong's, with the original doorways still in place. Many of the doors are showing their age, but it was wonderful to capture them as they are now, not replaced, redecorated or generally spruced up. To me they are fascinating, especially as lots of Hutong's are disappearing - how much longer will these gorgeous doors  be there for people like us to take photos of?

Many of these amazing doors are still decorated with red banners, which had been put up to welcome in the Chinese New Year :)

Tucked in a corner..

...a lovely weather worn door complete with door furniture, and statues which look as if they had been put in place after the wall had been built!

Different types of doors, 

I wonder what lies behind them?

This one looks really battered and worn...

.....and this one has been updated, but still has its elephant door statues in place :)

A glimpse down one of the alleyways and through a doorway. 

A glimpse through another doorway to  building beyond. It is more than likely that the building had been added a long time after the original, there would have been a square courtyard in the middle originally.

A peep into another alley and doorway.

Another updated doorway, it is lovely, but I prefer to see the old ones :)

Old, worn and battered, but still doing its job :)

My daughter and I had a lovely time sauntering through the Hutong's, I hope the Hutongs and their fascinating doors and doorways survive for a very long time to come :)

Houhai, Beijing.

Houhai, also known as the Lakes.

We set off to visit Prince Gong's Mansion, it is about a 30 minute walk to the mansion and we had a lovely walk, looking at shops, and eating fresh yummy custard tarts along the way. We finally got to Houhai at lunch time, and made our way to the Mansion. The crowds heading that way were unbelievable, and as we got to the queue to go in my daughter who was not feeling too good said she really couldn't face it. That was fine with me, so instead we had an amazing wander through the Hutongs, which I will write about in the next blog, and ended up back by the lakes. This blog is more about the street scenes and lovely things we saw, I hope you enjoy it :)

The wall plaques shown here and further on in this blog are on the walls of a building in the Hutongs which was once owned by a member of the Chinese Imperial family.

Beautiful buildings just behind the shops :)

Street furniture along the Hutongs

Peeping into alleys and doorways I spotted this....

I have no idea what it is, or why such a mask was nailed to a tree in a courtyard, but I love it :)

More street furniture, I love elephants :)

I think my daughter told me what this said, but I don't remember what she said!

Roof tiles, just gorgeous!

The wall plaques mentioned above, I am sure the building was very high status in its day.

Different building, different plaque, shame about the graffiti :(

An unusual store at the end of the Hutong.

Back at the lakes, I had not seen this side of the bridge before - it is really lovely :)

Back to the lovely shops in the area, plenty of people around. The Bell Tower which we visited last year can be seen in the background.

Interesting, lovely buildings :)

And finally, I wanted some more tea to bring home. We found this tiny shop which specialised in tea, and asked about Lichee Black Tea (my favourite!) and rather than just sell us some this lovely man asked to sit down and he made some samples for us to try! A mini tea ceremony just for us :) Both of us bought some lovely Black Lychee Tea and I also bought some fragrant Jasmine tea as well, plus some tiny tea bowls :) It was a lovely experience, the gentleman and his his wife were really lovely :)

Our walk through the Hutongs in the next blog :)