Tiananmen Square is one of the largest open squares in the world. It is bounded at one end by the wall of the Forbidden City and at another end by Mao's Mausoleum.

Jerrold Patz in front of the Forbidden City (L), a detail of the protective moat between the walls (C), and Naimah and me in a courtyard within the Forbidden City.

Our ticket to the Beijing Opera, part acrobatics, kung-fu, screechy singing, and dance, all in elaborate costumes and makeup.

The Beijing Opera performers apply their makeup in the theater foyer for all to observe (L), and part of the elaborate performance (R).

These are pictures taken at the Great Wall,  and a great wall it is indeed -- begun in the 3rd Century BCE, it spans over 4000 miles from the East China Sea to the Gobi desert in Central Asia. In the left top, Jerrold Patz and Naimah Zakaria pose in an empty section at Mu Tian Yu, and on the bottom right, Jerrold Patz is framed by one of the guard house arches. For over 15 centuries, the Great Wall was the largest civil engineering project in the world. It is listed as another of China's UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

These are pictures of one of my favorite buildings in the world, the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Here are views of both the front and back. The last picture is of a scale model at the China Pavilion, Walt Disney World, Florida.

Scenes at the Summer Palace, refuge for the Dowager Empress to escape Beijing's summer heat. The last is of the famous stone boat, paid for with monies earmarked for military spending.

Prior to the discovery of the Terra Cotta Soldiers in 1974, Xian was a dusty provincial capital. (During the Tang Dynasty [~610-907] it was the capital of China and the most populous city on earth). Now, with the Terra Cotta Army, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Additionally, its city wall is one of the best preserved in all of China. city wall, walled city, town wall   

There are thousands of foot soldiers and cavalry to protect the long-dead first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang [pronounced as "CHIN", from which we derive the name of the country China.] No two soldiers have the same face.

Almost everyone seems to adore the cuddly giant pandas, real life's version of the Teddy Bear. These were visited at Chengdu's Giant Panda Protection & Research Center. Here are four nibbling muffins (L) and a younger one sleeping in a tree (R). Other photos are below.

A rock maps out the site at the Dazu area (L) and the admission ticket to Dazu's Baoding Mountain (R).

Statue of the "Six Rounds of the Life Cycle". This is the only "Life Cycle" in Chinese grotto art. According to Buddhism, all people live in rounds of the life cycle of reasons and results. People who do good will be raised to heaven while people doing evil will be punished in hell. It is an endless cycle which the wheel depicts.

The Dazu Rock Carvings are a series of Chinese religious sculptures and carvings, dating back as far as the 7th century CE, depicting and influenced by Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist beliefs. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Dazu Rock Carvings are made up of 75 protected sites containing some 50,000 statues, with over 100,000 Chinese characters forming inscriptions and epigraphs. The sites are located on the steep hillsides within Dazu County (a few hours from the city of Chongqing, China), with the high points being the carvings found on Mount Baoding and Mount Beishan. The Three Saints is perhaps the best-known set of carvings (R), while the "Six Rounds of the Life Cycle" (above) is the rarest. Although the site contains rare, beautiful, and valuable carvings, it is infrequently visited by tourists.

We sailed the Yangtze through the famed Three Gorges and then visited the Three Gorges Dam site, one of the largest in the world.

Shanghai has one of the few operating MagLev (magnetic levitation) trains in the world. The train has no wheels and floats above its platform, propelled by magnetic forces. While it can reach speeds over 500 km/h, ours reached 431 km/h [~260 mph] (R).

A picture of our traveling group (taken the Tiananmen Square, in front
of the Forbidden City).