Stirring up the Chinese: November 2006

Beijing Duck for Lunch (Nov. 8)

Finally, we got to try the most famous Beijing Duck and other fine things like pig ears, duck liver and duck feet and duck head...mmhhh

Beijing kao ya at its best.

Us with two Chinese friends Qu and Ning

Tasting like leather...the duck feet..

.. so do the pig ears

One of our B-Days (Nov. 7)

We celebrated the upcoming Daniel Knapp's upcoming B-Day. One procedure that we will conduct 21 times plus foreigners' B-Day's....

Fabian, Hugo, Moritz and Daniel who was about to turn 23.

Marc and our French connection Michael Joly.

My room pal Filipp and me.

Filipp, Bert, Hugo, Andi, Moritz, Johannes and Fabian.

Fragrant Hills (Nov. 6)

Markus and I were anxious to see the Indian Summer...unfortunately the storm blew down the leaves over the weekend, so that it was rather vast up on that hill. Yet the view from the highest mountain around Beijing (over 500m) was worth climbing through the outback. It was a lot more fun digging in the dirt off-piste than reaching the top over thousands of stairs.

Lama Temple (Nov. 5)

The Lama Temple is definitely worse visiting. Especially, since the world's tallest buddha carved out of a single tree is situated there. It is 18m high and resting on an 8m deep wooden fundament. Awesome!

Temple of Heaven (Nov. 4)

Anna and I went to the south of Beijing to catch the one of a kind temple. The Temple of Heaven.
It was built in 1420 A.D. during the Ming Dynasty to offer sacrifice to Heaven.
The upper pictures display the Circular Mound Altar with three layered terraces with white marble. Next is the Imperial Vault of Heaven.

The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest is a big palace standing on three layers of eaves. It is by far the most impressive one. Especially, when you enter through the gates and look onto the vast area with the temple rising into the sky!

Biyun Si Temple at Fragrant Hills (Oct. 29)

This temple is called Temple of Azure Clouds and is one of the most beautiful temples in Beijing. A very spectacular achievement of the Ming dynasty are the 500 Luohan. 500 wooden, golden painted monks sitting in rows, extremely impressive. So was the marble temple!