This morning I met up with our group and we headed out for a Chinese breakfast of porridge, won ton soup, and two different types of dumplings. Well, all I can say was that the porridge had the consistency of wall paper paste and didn't taste much better too, the dumplings repeated on me all day and the won ton soup was good but not what I would normally have for breakfast. I guess it is breakfast in the hotel tomorrow.

After breakfast some of the group split up and went off to do their own thing and I stuck with the tour leader (Roy) and Claire, Emma and Jane and we had a walk around the local area, showing us where the shops, markets and some local historical points of interest. Then we headed off to the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower, two towers used to signal the time every two hours, luckily as we climbed the 45" stairs we just caught the start of the drumming which only happens every 2 hours. It was amazing and I just wished that my camera could record video, which it can't. I have added some pics below.

After the Drum Tower we caught the bus and travelled down to the south of the city where we were going to visit the Temple of Heaven, but had a stop in a bakery for some lunch. I had some hairy roll which resembled a big hairy turd, but was in fact a quite nice shredded pork covered roll with some sort of cream or butter inside, I am still not sure what that was.

After filling up, we headed to the south entrance gate of the Temple of Heaven.

The Temple of Heaven, literally the Altar of Heaven is a complex of Taoist buildings situated in the southeastern part of central Beijing, in Chongwen District. The complex was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for good harvest. It is regarded as a Taoist temple, although Chinese Heaven worship, especially by the
reigning monarch of the day, pre-dates Taoism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Heaven

This evening we went to a Kung Fu show at the Red Theatre which was absolutely amazing and a must for anyone who comes here. I don't know how these guys can do this twice a day and the show that we saw was their 3336 show (I think). Although we did notice that the main character changed a couple of times during the show, especially when he was doing some of the balance yourself on spikes and smash yourself over the head and break wooden poles and metal knives. So we should kind of let him off for that.

I took a couple of pictures during the show, then I was politely told not to take any pictures, until the end of the show. So only have a few.

After the show we went for dinner and had a traditional hot pot (thanks to Dave and Chris I will not write any more about it, you will have to look at the photos and guess for yourself what it was) ;-)