Beijing days 3-4

My subway station lies beneath clotted historical memory

The School of Sinonology at China People's University is the home of its Institute for the Study of Christian Culture. Why not?

The Bell Tower, marks the north end of grand North-South axis

The young Beijinger noticed that the Chinese version uses bodhisattva language throughout, softening it a bit. I told him that gates and walls of ancient cities often have living people buried in them, especially women, and that this seemed like a Buddhicization of a Confucianization of such a story. He just through it cruel.

 

 Yonghe / Lama Temple, rare survivor of the Maoist years

 Overexposed view of a hutong street with characteristic vehicles

Bad air greeted me only Tuesday morning, here the view from the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

 Cardplayers along the long corridor leading to the Temple of Heaven

 The Temple of Heaven, a really quite epically delightful confection.

 The far more archaic and creepy-seeming Circular Mound Altar.

 Kites

Scalloped gateway of Tiantan Park

Zaha Hadid's "Galaxy Soho" - mostly empty, so far as I could tell

 

A full moon on my quiet street rounds out the day