Temple of Heaven

The Temple of Heaven in Beijing is in an enormous walled park, and was built for the purpose of an annual procession led by the Ming and Qing emporers to perform rites and make sacrifices to promote the next year's crops and to gain favor for the empire.


A tree-lined walk inside the grounds of the Temple of Heaven.
We all enjoyed walking (and running!) around inside this beautiful complex of traditional Chinese architecture. Our crew in front of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests.

Always the ornately carved and painted ceilings in traditional Chinese buildings.


Imperial Vault of Heaven... built to store ceremonial stone tablets. One of these had the name of the god (was it the one true God?) they sacrificed to on it, others had the names of the emporers.