We had a great day today (Friday) – we went to the Temple of Heaven, the Hutong Village (pronounced "who tohng" (think the word "tone" with a short "guh" on the end of it)) and saw the Chinese Golden Acrobats.
The Temple of Heaven was very neat. After going through some beautiful courtyards and buildings, we ended up at a large stone structure that was made up of rings at different levels (imagine a wedding cake, where each higher layer is smaller in diameter than the previous layer). At the top you go to the center of the circle and say prayers to Heaven for things like a good harvest, etc. (See the Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_heaven)
Trivia fact: Circles and squares have important meanings in the Chinese culture – circles mean Heaven, and squares mean Earth. This is why religious structures are typically circular.
The Hutong Village was very different. This is where we got a glimpse of ancient Chinese culture. The roads are very narrow (I believe Hutong means "narrow streets" or something like that). The roads are so narrow that cars can't get through there, so you ride around in rickshaws! Rickshaws are two wheeled buggies that (in the old days) were pulled by a man. The ones in Hutong Village were a bit more modern – it was the buggy type of thing, but it was pulled by a man on a bicycle. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickshaw) Before we went on the rickshaws, we went up a big tower with 69 very steep steps. At the top you could see out over large parts of the city. In ancient times the monks (?) would hit a huge drum to sound out the time (like chimes at the top of each hour). The huge drum is long gone, but they have a number of very large drums, and shortly after we got there they did a demonstration – it was awesome, and very LOUD! LOL!
After the tower & drum demonstration, we walked a bit through the Hutong temple, then went on rickshaw rides down a couple streets in Hutong Village and ended up at a residence – the place is laid out such that there is a courtyard (probably 40 ft by 40 ft), and small buildings on each side of the courtyard. Each building had one or two rooms. Basically, the whole area made up a house – on the north side was the master bedroom and a study. On east side were two bedrooms. On the west side was the kitchen and some other rooms. (I don't remember what rooms were on the south side of the courtyard.) This is the layout of the traditional, typical Hutong residence. There weren't any bathrooms there – you had to use a common bathroom down the street. Imagine being in the dead of winter and having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night (or even going to the kitchen) – you'd have to put on a warm winter coat just to go to the bathroom or kitchen or such! Quite a different lifestyle...! Oh, normally there would have been two additional courtyards – one north of the north rooms, and one south of the south rooms, but in the residence we visited, those courtyards were long gone.
After the residence, we took the rickshaws back to where we started, then went to see the Chinese Golden Acrobats. We've seen the CGA a couple times back in Chicago, but this program was different – they had some live birds flying around above the audience. It was quite a fun time. After the show, we went back to the hotel and collapsed.
Tomorrow we are going to the Great Wall, and other things. Tomorrow is going to be long, then we will try to hit the sack early because we will be leaving very early Sunday morning to go to Nanchang.
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