China highlights

My parents and I want to China in May. We took many pictures. Here are the essentials.

The first three pictures are from the Great Wall. They line up with each other, left to right. Panorama-style.





















This is the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. It's a beautiful, holy space.









Roofline detail for the walls surrounding the Temple of Heaven. The Forbidden City, the former home of the emperor, has similar work, but in imperial yellow instead of heavenly blue and green. The ends of the roof beams also are decorated with a more heavenly motif than the ones in the forbidden city.

Another shot of one of the temple's praying buildings.

Dragon sculpture. There's a really cool one of these in the Forbidden City.












My mom's cousin standing on the rock on the holiest of the 3 altars. This altar is in the center of 3 levels, each with 9 circles of stone, with 9 steps between each layer. The circular altar is surrounded by a circular wall, and then a square wall.












Sadly, this Wuhan bus is typical. The air pollution in China is really, really bad.












These melons are called gua. They are tasty, almost like cucumber - not very sweet as melon goes. One of the few new foods I experienced.









The three old trees of Guling. In my grandfather's time, these 3 trees were the only trees. They are ancient and sacred.











Views back into the valley from Mt. Lu. It was pretty cloudy during our time in Guling, but you can see a little bit of valley past the glacial hills.









In Wuhan, where my grandfather was born, there is a riverfront park full of statues. Here you see the hero of the Changjiang (Yangtse), working with a dragon and turtle to stop a flood, emerging from his dead father's belly, and defeating a nine-headed flood snake demon. Last time this river flooded, 800,000 people died. It's a beautiful and useful flood control park.