Lama Temple And Hutongs

After lunch we head to the Lama Temple 雍和宫 (Yong He Gong) to wander around this (world’s largest) Tibetan monastery: it was pretty amazing and all the smells and smoke of incense burning added to the atmosphere. There a a load of temples to see here, far too many to absorb in one visit, but we manage to look around most of them. 

We move from there towards the hutongs – small old narrow streets of Beijing that make me think of what I imagined a typical China city to be. 


Alas, with modern progress, most have been swept away to make way for new skyscrapers, hotels, Olympics etc. Apparently of the more than 2000 that existed before 2008, only about 600 hutongs remain. I think the government has agreed no more will be demolished, but somehow I suspect that won't be the case... 

Ricky leads us to one of his friend’s shops and I wasn't sure if we were expected to buy something and it was a bit awkward – I didn’t actually want anything and there was a point where we were just looking at stuff to be polite, and every time I went near something, someone would say “do you want to buy it?” I felt like saying, “do you?” but I didn’t.

Anyway, to avoid being forced to buy a huge painting of a Buddhist representation of the world, I found some fridge magnets that looked OK, so settled for them thinking they would be cheap. Ha – not for me they weren’t - 75元 each!