The Ancient Observatory, CBD, and the Old Summer Palace

Yesterday, because I don't have classes on Wednesday, I decided to do what I usually do - early morning sightseeing. I first started off by heading down to the Ancient Observatory....which I'll admit, wasn''t nearly as grand as I thought it was going to be....and by grand, I quite literally mean size above all else.   

I honestly don't think that it was any taller than two stories, which isn't the kind of height I would've had in mind for an observatory, of all things. 

It was still an interesting little place, nonetheless, especially all the old astronomical instruments that were there, all of whom were at least three hundred years old.  

All very fascinating, yes, but unfortunately, it took up no more than an hour of my time. Fortunately, just down the street stands the last remaining remnant of the city walls that once surrounded Beijing, along with the only surviving watchtower of the inner city wall. 

It's more or less just a tiny battered stretch of wall, surrounded by a narrow but nevertheless very pretty little scenic park. 

As soon as I had soaked up all the sights there, I then trooped off down the street into the Central Business District of Beijing, which is chocked full of shiny skyscrapers that wouldn't at all look out of place in New York or Chicago. 

Here's a close-up of  Tower III of the China World Trade Center. It's the tallest building in the city, standing proud at 74 floors. It's not completely finished yet, as one can plainly see, but it's still somewhat impressive. However, I don't nearly find it as aesthetically pleasing as the Empire State Building, nor the Chrysler Tower (along with a slew of other buildings back home).

This is the beijing TV Venter, which is without a doubt quite simply the strangest-looking building I've even laid eyes upon in all my life.  While certainly quite a spectacle, I can't help but wonder how this building of all structures can be structurally stable. Until someone enlightens me, you could not pay me enough to stand directly underneath beneath this for longer than an instant. 

After noticing the giant dent, I pondered going inside to tell the people there that someone may have accidentally backed up into their building.

At first, it seemed as if my exploring for the day had finally come to an end when I returned to campus, feeling very weary from all my wandering. However, after lunch, I suddenly found myself unexpectedly re-energized, and thus without much thought at all, I decided to hop back in the subway for just a little bit more sight-seeing. Originally, I planned to go to Beijing University, one of the most famous (of not the most) institution of higher learning in all of China. However....that plan came all to naught when I somehow managed to pass by it and ended up at the Old Summer Place instead, located to the west of the university. So, seeing that as long as I was there, I decided to myself, what was the harm?

Now, there's a few big glaring differences between the Summer Palace (which I had already visited) and the Old Summer Palace. Built by the emperors during the Qing Dynasty, several of the palace buildings there were designed with the help of two European Jesuits in classical European Style. Even more interesting, the Qing Emperors actually handled most affairs from here and used the Forbidden City only for ceremonial purposes....that is, until the Second Opium War in 1860, when a joint British-French Expeditionary Force marched inland, with revenge in mind for the deaths of twenty European and Indian prisoners at the hands of the Chinese forces.... 



To put it bluntly, the Old Summer Palace is what Versailles would look like if you took a nuke to it. 





Here's probably the saddest sight in the rubble heaps - the remains of two stone lions, both horribly mangled from the destruction of the palace over a hundred years ago. 



Now that their faces have been terribly disfigured, they no longer look fierce, or even proud. Looking into their lifeless, stone eyes, one almost sees a befuddled, imploring expression, as if they're trying to ask you, "Why me?"

As closing time drew near, I finally decided to call it a day and head straight back home....and of course, because the sun had basically set at that point, I found myself lost almost the moment I stepped out of the nearest gate. Fortunately, since the park was in the far northwest of the city,  as long as I kept going southeast, I'd be okay.

...That's what I told myself over and over and over at least as I wandered through totally unfamiliar streets and ran into dead end after dead end after dead end. As it turns out though, my originally hunch was actually right, and after wandering about blindly, I stumbled back across the subway station, meaning that I was good as gold. 

It still took my quite a while to get there, even when I was on the right track....ugh, let me tell you, the tourist maps they have in the lobby of the International Students Dorm are NOT drawn to scale.