Dr. Mark Nan Tu

The village at the foot of the hill with the golden top at the back

The village which has been here for hundreds of years

The Miaofeng Mountain Scenic Area is located in the Mentougou District some 55 kilometers from downtown Beijing. It is one of the scenic areas in Beijing for the ancient temples, pines, rocks, and flowers.

The top of the mountain Jingding or (golden top) is 1,291 meters above sea level. Apart from beautiful natural scenery, the mountain is also famous for its largest traditional temple fair in north China. This tradition started in the Ming Dynasty and is still preserved nowadays.

Because of its dense vegetation, the area has high concentration of fresh air. There is a paved road leads to the golden top which allows access by care. There is also a well developed ancient trail that connects the village at the bottom of the hill to the golden top.

We parked out car at the village at the bottom of the hill. We then followed the ancient road sign and started hike up the mountain. The road is build with stones and some of them were destroyed over the years. It took us about one hour to reach the golden top. The hike is free but the entrance to the golden top scenic area is 30RMB. After paying the entrance fee, we were in are rather large area of temples and pagodas. This temple was build in Ming dynasty and each year, during April, there is a two week temple fair that drew artists, craftsmen and merchants from the surrounding areas.

The one hour hike to the top is rather easy with well marked signs and visible destinations. The view from the top is magnificent. I climbed the MiaoFeng mountain many times during my stay in Beijing and each time it has provided me with new found inspirations.

The ancient road is not maintained by well marked

The golden top

The temple and the pagoda at the top

View from the top

MiaoFeng Mountain in Winter

The golden top in Winter

Mentougou district of Beijing is in the distance

The team building event at the foot of the mountain

The unrepaired section of the wall was build in the Ming dynasty

JiuGuKou is located in HuaiRou district, some 80km north of Beijing. This is a state park which offers dense forest and Great Wall remains from the Ming dynasty. The HuaiBei ski resort is at the foot of the mountain. The resort is used as the out door playground for many company employees for team building events during the summer.

A hike from the park entrance to the Great wall takes about an hour. When I reached the top, I could notice the odd shape of a watch tower. Most of the watch towers along the Great wall are square shaped. This particular watch tower, however, is rectangular shaped. Why this watch tower is has this odd shape? After careful examination of the structure, I found the answer. This tower was building on a rather narrow strip of the mountain range. The foundation of the tower is a rectangular in shape. Thus the watch tower has to be built with the shape to fit the foundation.

This section of the wall is unrepaired. The remains of the wall stretched along the mountain ranges and disappeared into the horizon.

Walking on the unrepaired section of the Wall is a unforgettable experience

The rectangular shaped watch tower

The entrance to the JiuGuKou Great Wall park

General Qi Ji Guang’s scuplture and the Huangyaguan Great Wall what he helped to build

The Qi Dynasty Wall is build with stones and the Ming Dynasty Wall is build with bricks

The Huangyaguan Great Wall

Impenetrable, dangerous, old and beautiful are some of the words to describe the Huangyaguan Great Wall. We started off from Beijing early in the morning and arrived at the Huangyaguan Great Wall’s just in time just for lunch. There were many restaurants to choose from. We were taken by the warmness of a host of a courtyard. I was not expecting much from the food. But it turned out to be much worse than I thought. The foot was badly prepared and the service was horrible, the tables were very dirty. I guess they just do not care of the customers are there are plenty of them coming every day and very few will ever return here.

Finished eating the food, we hired a tractor for 10 Yuan to send us to the summit. After that, it was 3 kilometers walk on the Great Wall down to the foot of the mountain. The Huangyaguan Great Wall was first build in the Qi Dynasty in the (700AD) and was heavily repaired in the Ming Dynasty. The Qi dynasty wall was build with stones and the Ming dynasty Walls were build with distinctive bricks. Walking along the Wall we could see sections of Great Wall were piled up with rocks and others with bricks.

Coming down the Great Wall, we visited a

I enjoyed the Spring Festival holiday in Beijing. Firstly, I wanted to have a tour to Heinan after the first day of Lunar year, however, the return ticket was very difficult to book. So I decided to visit the surrounding areas in Beijing. I drove to the Hongluo Temple in a sunny noon.

The Jing-Cheng Highway was built last year. It was from Beijing to Huairou. People can drive directly to Huairou and by pass the Jing-Shun road. I spent half an hour on the expressway to reach Huairou country which is 40 kilometers from the Five Ring road. From there, it is a 30 minutes drive on the local road to Hongluo Temple.

I arrived in the afternoon. I parked the car and went to the gate. I watched a country folk performance danced by the gong and drum team. It was the best non-professionals

I visited the Dajue Temple with my friends during the Spring Festival�s holiday.

Dajue Temple is near by the Summer Palace. It is the nearest temple to the city. There is a path just out side the Summer Palace which leads to the Dajue temple. It is very close to the Jiufeng National Park and the Phoenix hill.

Established in the forth year of Xianyong in Liao Density (1068), Dajue Temple locates at the path of a spring brooking. The temple faces the east which is the Qidan people�s custom of admiring sun-rise. The buildings of the temple are scattered over the hills of the mountain. The temple, from the east to the west, consists of the Hill Gate (the main entrance), the pavilion housing a stone tablet, the Bell Tower, the Sky King Hall, the Grand Hall, the Buddha of Immeasurable Life Hall, the Sharira Tower, the Dorgan King Hall. Most of those buildings were rebuilt in Qing Density.

There were few visitors when I arrived. To my surprise, the ticket was very cheap, only RMB10. I found there was not a single monks in the temple and it was actually managed by Beijing Tour Administration Bureau, same as the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City. The visitors can see the trace of professional management quickly. Comparing with the tickets of Jietai Temple and Tanzhe Temple, which were RMB35 and RMB40, the Dajue temple was a lot cheaper and were more professionally managed . People can easily see the different between the nonprofit business and for profit business.

I was attracted by the exhibition near the entrance. It showed all the land contracts signed through the temple history. There was a time when a lot of land was owned by Dajue Temple. They rented the land to farmers for cropping, like a land lord. The amount of land owned can be viewed as an indicator for the prosperity of the Dajue temple. However, at the late of Qing Density, their land became less. Dajue Temple was deserted after 1949 and many small villages were build on the land of the Dajue temple.

Out of the temple, I hiked the back of the hill. There was a large land for the military installation, Half way was a unique garden. The small trails and the spring water created perfect pictorial scenery.

Returning to the city, my friends and I discussed what the effect would bring to Chinese economy of the privatization of the land in China, and, when the privatization would come.

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The life is like light of the sundown,
Wealth is like the bloom on the tile,
Yanjing Beer in the hand and we shall all drunk tonight,
The sun will always rise out tomorrow.

Majority of the scenic spots in Beijing are at the northeast side. However, the Tanzhe Temple locates at the west and more than 40 kilometers from the west end of the Changan Avenue. I wanted to visit Tanzhe Temple earlier. Beijingers believe that people built the Tanzhe Temple before they built Beijing City. I knew the name from a book named Peking Picnic written by Ann Bridge. The book

The esclator which leads to the entrance of the pagoda

The interior of the pagoda base where the remains of the ancient pagoda lies

Thanks to Mr. Lu Xun (1881–1936), One of the most prominent writers in contemporary Chinese literature wrote a story titled

The Red Shells Temple, or Hongluo Si received its name from a legend that two spiral shells gave out red light in the evening. Located at the foot of the Hongluo Mountain, the temple is seven kilometers northwest of Huairou County. First built during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), the temple is worth a visit in early summer because of the wild flowers, fresh air. Covering an area of 16.6 acres, Hongluo Temple is the largest temple in the Beijing’s northern district. Surrounded by hills dotted with pines and cypresses in different shapes, the temple’s tasteful layout creates an atmosphere of quiet contemplation.

Admission Ticket: 30 yuan (adult), 15 yuan (kids under 1.2 meters)
Opening hours: Daily (7:00

JieTai Temple is located 35km west of Beijing and is only 10km from Tanzhe Temple. JieTaiSi, or ‘Temple of the Ordination Altar’, takes its name from its famous Ming marble ordination altar, built some 1,300 years ago. This altar is nearly 5 meters high and is decorated with exquisite carvings.

The temple was first built in the year 622 during the Tang dynasty but most of the buildings here now date from the Qing dynasty (1644 – 1911).

The temple sits on a hillside looking more like a fortress than a temple, surrounded by forbiddingly tall red walls. On a clear day, this temple offers an unhindered view of Beijing.

Surrounding the main hall are a number of courtyards containing rock formations and ancient twisted pine and cypress trees. It is renowned for its venerable pines – eccentric looking trees growing in odd directions. Indeed, one, leaning out at an angle of about thirty degrees, is pushing over a pagoda on the terrace beneath it.

These ancient trees and are the subject of many songs. It is said that the Chinese Scholar Tree, known as the protector of Buddhism, is more than 1,000 years old.

Other famous trees include the ‘Nine Dragon Tree’ which has 9 branches that reach up to the sky like 9 flying dragons, and the ‘Mobile Tree’ which trembles even when only one branch is slightly touched.

The enormous white marble ordination platform (JieTai) is China’s largest and intricately carved with figures – monks, monsters (beaked and winged) and saints. Dating from the Liao Dynasty, it is a three-tiered structure with 113 statues of the God of Ordination placed in niches around the base. It is located in Jie Tan Dian (Hall of the Altar of Ordination) in the far right (north west) corner of the temple.

Ceremonies conducted on this platform to commemorate the ascension of a devotee to full monkhood required permission from the emperor. Often referred to as the “Beida [Peking University, nominally the best university in China] of Buddhism” for its ability to attract the most promising monastic scholars (along with temples in QuanZhou and HangZhou), it has been the most significant site for the ordination of Buddhist monks for 900 years.

Another smaller hall holds a beautiful wooden altar, decorated with dragons in relief. There are also fragrant peony gardens.