Beijing or Bust!

I arrived in Beijing on Monday the 3rd, after a busy but fun weekend in Seoul, South Korea.

Beijing is the capital city of the People's Republic of China. It was also the host city for the 2008 summer Olympics.

China is one of the world's oldest countries - you can actually trace its history for about 6000 years! It also has one of the oldest written languages. They use Chinese characters, completely different from the English / Roman alphabet. There are about 1.3 billion people who live in China. Beijing is China's second largest city (the largest city is Shanghai) and it has a population of about 18 million people.

Some things in Beijiing are very familiar! Here is a picture of me at the Beijing Airport Pizza Hut!

We stayed at the China World Shangri-La Hotel, in the Central Business District. As it was a work trip, I did not have much time to sightsee, but I did enjoy the nice hotel!

On Wednesday the guys finished their meetings early, so I was able to go to the Park. We went to the Temple of Heaven Park (Ten Tian Do). It is a park that was built in 1420, in the Ming Dynasty. The temple was built to honour the gods, also as the Chinese Emperor was called the Son of Heaven, it was his way to honour his ancestors. They made regular sacrifices at the temple.

Here is the circular main altar of the temple. It was very impressive.

I also had a chance to see the oldest tree in Beijing (at least that is what they say!) - it was more than 500 years old!