Devon Winrick

December 10th Beijing

December 10th would be the day I'd get start my day with Chinese Pizza Hut. I'm not a huge fan of Pizza Hut in the US (I remember it being great as a kid, was it just awesome "because pizza" or did they change their recipe, or did I change?).

We'd also get to tour The Temple of Heaven as well as a Buddhist temple, complete with incense burning.

But first, we had to take the subway. Nothing really new there, except I noticed this terminal was out of service - and running Windows XP! With a custom theme too! I was really nerding out.

We approached the gates to get our tickets into The Temple of Heaven and realized we were hungry.

First let's get a look at that menu.

You can get a "dirty series" drink.

The Chinese like different flavors than us. While we'd like to just throw a bunch of sauce and meat on a Pizza, the Chinese probably wouldn't spend the kind of money we do on that. It wouldn't be considered fancy. I guess it's not considered fancy in the US, but the Papa Johns down the street from me will charge you $30 for a simple pizza.

So here's how the Chinese like their pizza.

Eventually the wife and I settled on getting two different flavors, but that's not what I'm going to focus on here.

That crust is just filled to the brim with cheese and butter. It's amazing.

The other thing we ordered was steak.

Okay - that's enough food pictures for now. We spent most of our day at The Temple of Heaven. I'll show a few pictures with no descriptions, and then we'll get into the parts I found the most interesting.

The first thing I found interesting was this roofing, which was low enough that I could touch. It's very smooth.

There's a huge walkway between the two areas of the park.

Next up is my favorite area of this park. If you speak in the center of this monument your voice will echo several times. It's an unusual feeling since you're out in the open - not in any kind of tunnel or enclosed room.

From there we followed a path through the garden for a while, and eventually to the exit. At regular intervals there were little boxes playing music, and in some places elderly people sleeping on the grass or in wheelchairs.

We didn't have much daylight left, but we were a quick train ride away from another interesting spot - a Buddhist temple.

We got in shortly befored they closed - and there were still quite a few people inside.

Generally I wanted to be respectful of people in the praying temple, so I didn't take many pictures. However, one picture I did take was of this statue in one of the buildings.

...and finally, the last set of pictures of the buddhist temple.

At this point we were running out of daylight. From there we ventured back into downtown Beijing in search of food.

Exercising in China - Chinese Square Dancing

One thing that I wish we had more of in the West is what the Chinese call "Square Dancing" - playing music and dancing on public sidewalks in the city. Usually, it's older people, and it's done for exercise. To top it off, it's synchronized dancing.

I have to say, I tried to join them. I think I lasted about two songs the first night. The old ladies didn't just beat me. I danced with them for a couple rounds and then we went to go get dinner. Then we explored the city square some. On our way back home, we passed them, still dancing.

Exercising in China - Whips

Dancing isn't the only form of exercising in public that I learned about in China. Some nights - and this night in particular - this guy would whip the wall outside out hotel.