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 :)