Lama Temple is the largest and best-preserved lamasery in Beijing. The “Yonghe Temple” is located in Beijing’s Dongcheng District, near the northeastern corner of the Second Ring Road. Lines 2 and 5 of the Beijing Subway both stop at Yonghegong Lama Temple Station.
It was built in 1694 during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) as the residence of the Emperor Yongzheng. It originally served as an official residence for court eunuchs. It was then converted into the court of the Prince Yong (Yin Zhen), a son of the Kangxi Emperor and himself the future Yongzheng Emperor. After Yongzheng’s ascension to the throne in 1722, half of the building was converted into a lamasery, a monastery for monks of Tibetan Buddhism. The other half remained an imperial palace.
The temple is said to have survived the Cultural Revolution due to the intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai. It was reopened to the public in 1981.
The resplendent architectural complex is endowed with the style of an imperial palace, making it distinctive from others. It occupies an area of 66,400 sqm and can be described as a mini-palace with yellow glazed tiles on the roof and red walls circling the group of buildings.
Every element of the temple is entirely symmetrical, with main halls on a north-south axis and wing halls on both sides.
The Temple is arranged along a north-south central axis, which has a length of 480m. The main gate is at the southern end of this axis. Along the axis, there are five main halls which are separated by courtyards: the Hall of the Heavenly Kings (Tian Wang Dian or Devaraja Hall), the Hall of Harmony and Peace (Yonghegong), the Hall of Everlasting Protection (Yongyoudian), the Hall of the Wheel of the Law (Falundian), and the Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses (Wanfuge).
The temple combines various architectural styles of the Han, the Manchu, the Mongolian and the Tibetan.
The Pavilion of Ten Thousand Happinesses the last main hall, is the highest hall of this temple. It is a three-storey building  and contains an 26 m tall (18 m above the ground and 8 m underneath) statue of the Maitreya Buddha carved from a single piece of White Sandalwood. The seventh Dalai presented it to the Emperor Qianlong, the son of Emperor Yongzheng. The statue is one of three artworks in the Temple which were included in the Guinness Book of Records in 1993.

Pics taken in Spring 2014.
The temple is intensively used by Chinese people to pray and ask for favors. Incense is now strictly controlled to reduce pollution and one gets a standard package when going inside. Normally one uses three incense sticks each time at each altar, sometimes the tips are first put into a fire, sometimes just used like that. After kneeling and then bowing three times, the sticks are left in a container. Mostly people have to stand in line for their turn to kneel down.
The admission ticket also comes with a mini disk with a VCD introducing the temple.

More details:
http://www.beijingtrip.com/attractions/lamatemple.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonghe_Temple

The park in Beijing has the longest and best preserved section of the city’s Ming Dynasty city wall. The park is located 3 km from the city center and extends west from Chongwenmen to Dongbianmen and then north to near the Beijing Railway Station. The park features a 1.5 km section of the Ming city wall and the Southeast Corner Tower, which are over 550 years old and surrounded by green park space to the south and east.

Pictures taken on 6 April 2014.
Beijing’s inner city wall was built during the Ming Dynasty in 1419. The Ming city walls stood for nearly 550 years until the construction of the early 1960s when most of the gates and walls were torn down to construct the Beijing Subway, which runs underneath where the walls stood. The subway’s inner loop line turned into the old city at Chongwenmen to stop at the Beijing Railway Station, and did not need to run beneath a section of the wall at the southeast corner of the inner city. Of the 40 km of the original wall, only this 1.5 km section was spared. Inside this section of the wall (north of the wall) are railway yards of Beijing Station. Outside the wall (south of the wall) stood residential homes and small businesses.
In the late 1990s, the city government decided convert the remnants of the wall into a park and relocate the small businesses and homes between the foot of the southern city wall and Chongwenmen East Avenue. Construction began in November 2001 and the park was completed in September 2003.
More details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_City_Wall_Relics_Park

On 2 April I was invited for a tour of the Conrad Hotel on the Eastern 3^rd Ring Road. After a great lunch (nice steak!) I was shown around the hotel. Nice architecture and the rooms are really impressive, even the so-called “standard” room. See the exterior and also views of the polluted 3^rd Ring Road, as seen from one of the corner rooms.

On 4 April some night pictures from what I call World Trade Center Tower III. Officially it is called “China World Summit Wing”, the newest part of China World Trade Center that started in 2002 and was completed in 2010. Summit Wing is a 5 star hotel located in the upper section of the China World Trade Center Tower 3. The Summit Wing has 278 hotel rooms and 8 different notable restaurants. The tower is a 330m high and is the tallest skyscraper within Beijing.
Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_World_Trade_Center

According to our friend Alfred, an “Old China Hand” based in Suzhou:

Note that there are over ten catenary arch suspension bridges in the world longer between the two towers than Aizhai. The longest is in Japan: The Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, also known as the Pearl Bridge, links the city of Kobe on the mainland of Honshu to Iwaya on Awaji Island, in Japan. Since its completion, in 1998, the bridge has the longest central span of any suspension bridge in the world, at 1,991 m. Somewhat longer than the bridge in Hunan. Chinese bridges with a longer central span are: The Xihoumen Bridge in Zhejiang (1650 m) ; the Runyang Bridge at Zhenjiang (1490 m) and the Yiangyin Bridge (1385 m) , both over the Yangtze are also much longer. The Tsingma Bridge in Hong Kong is 1377 m. Several more are in construction. The shorter bridges we see over the Huangpu River in Shanghai are cable stayed bridges.
And according to Wikipedia again the World’s highest suspension bridge is China: The Sidu River Bridge (Siduhe Bridge, 四渡河特大桥) is a 1,222 m-long (4,009 ft) suspension bridge crossing the valley of the Sidu River near Yesanguan in Badong County in Hubei Province. They quote the height above the Sidu River as around 500 m. Note it is also longer than Aizhai!

Seems the Aussie media put me on the wrong track! It is well possible the original “record” was referring to bridge between tunnels”, being a bit far-fetched as a “record”.
And happy to see some people really read my stuff… Thanks Alfred.

Where else? In China, again.

(origin of most pictures is not clear)

Aizhai Bridge in Hunan province is 336 m high and has a 1,176 m span. It connects two traffic tunnels in the mountains, cutting the time needed to traverse the canyon from 30 minutes to 1 minute.
Construction took five years and was finished at the end of 2011.
Vehicles drive motor along a two-way, four-lane motorway. Pedestrians walk along it on a special walkway under the road.