Today I decided was going to be as peacefull a day as possible after too much hustle and bustle Beijing style... I went to visit two temples, the Buddist Lama temple (2nd most important temple for Buddists in China) and the Temple of Heaven park. I started off the day with the temple of Heaven, which has many important old Chinese buildings in it. Including the echoing wall, which I was most looking forward to seeing as if you whisper at the very start of the wall it turns into a loud echo, unfortuanley I didnt bother as it was so jam packed with tour groups (even at 9AM) it would of been impossible. So instead I took a stroll around the gardens and watched some of the older residents of Beijing doing what I guess is the Chinese equivelent of tea dancing in some of the courtyards in the park, groups of OAPs doing Tai Chi and some younger more spritley residents doing some acrobatics with fans and swords. The strangest corner of the temple of heaven park had to be the musical instrument corner, where individual musicians would practice their instruments. It was a very strange catterwalling of everything from opera singers to strange plucky instruments to old pianos some had rolled in all playing diffrent, often out of key tunes at the same time. Bizzare. I left the temple of Heaven park to visit the Lama temple next, Buddist temples have turned out to be my faveorite sights in Beijing. They are so peacefull (unlike their surroundings) and smell beautifull with their incense burning a mystical haze throughout. Unlike Beijing which smells vary from block to block and each smells stronger and more alien than the last and are almost always disgusting (I think this is why I completley lost my appetite in Beijing) I especially enjoyed the Lama temple as so far in China I have been finding it very difficult to read facial experssions (Im sure some anceint person once said some thing about "the inscrutable east" which is exactly how I felt in Beijing) but as I was in a temple it was onbvious what everyone was thinking which was comforting. Buddism has been in decline since liberation (as Marie and Scarllet refered to it) in 1949 but the old relics are amazing, especially the 80 foot high Gold Budda in the Lama temple. Also I took a picture of a monk, semi by accident, and he appeared around half and hour later and started having a rather philisophical conversation with me about photographs and where I was from, which was intrigueing if a little unnerving...