Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - Tea Break and Dragon Walk

All the walking was tiring for us. We decided to stop for an afternoon tea break when we saw a cafe in the park selling these cool dragon coffee. My husband was also craving proper coffee. 

Ta-dah! Cheesy Chinese coffee with a dragon on it. It's not hand drawn. It was printed by a machine inside the cafe. I'm such a sucker for dragon anything. The coffee wasn't that cheap, nor expensive, but it was definitely cheesy! And I regret nothing! We shared only one cup though, just for the experience and for the photo :)

After coffee, we had more energy so off we went again. Saw these stone steps and went up following it. Bah, nothing exciting there cause it came down back to the usual park path again. 

The park also has it's own wall of the 9 royal dragons. But we've already seen the original one at the Forbidden City, so we weren't so impressed by it. Still it warrens some photo taken. 

At the park they did have an official info of the dragon in Chinese and English. 

And almost anywhere you walk at the park, this view is always following you around :p

There were different boats at different area of the park. We found some dragon boats here! Fun fact, in 2025 on my trip to Hue Vietnam, I took a one day tour of Hue and it included a cheesy Dragon boat ride down the Perfume River! You've got to wait till I upload those photos in my blog to read more about that adventure!

More dragons in one of the ceilings of a pond side pavilion. This one was so colourful and elaborated that I just have to take a photo of it.

Here is a souvenir shot of us beneath the dragon ceiling. It's only when you are left to explore at leisure that you can truly appreciate all the little corner of each attraction that you visit :)

Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - More Temples

 

More temples scattered around the park. They have the usual feature, the stone carving as the middle piece where the stairs are leading to the temple. 

The usual gate guardians. This one has a laughing Buddha too. 

The other two gate guardians. 

Just right outside the temple. I don't know why it always looked dark inside. They don't seems to like putting any lights to illuminate the inside. Perhaps it was more to preserved the items inside?

With the technology of phone setting, and perhaps some photo editing, you could capture the items inside via your mobile camera, lol. 

And my favourite bit of this temple, was the cute cat that was just sleeping on the praying mat right in front of Buddha. So cute and fluffy! Nobody seems to mind that the cat was inside the temple at all.

One thing about China, there are a lot of people dressing up in period costume and getting their photos taken. It wasn't just young men and mainly women, but here you can see kids, and even older generations dressing up as emperor or empress. Here is a cute kid outside a door/gate feature getting her photo taken.

What is a park if there are no water lilies to admire. After trying to grow waterlilies at home, I know can tell the difference between a water lilies and lotus without any problem :)

Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - Jingqing Studio Part 2

Still on the topic of the Jingqing studio, here are more photos of it. This bridge seems to be the center piece of the first garden we walked into. From this photo, it looked pretty nice.

But from a different angle, it looked kinda cramped. Lol.

Next was a super small corridor walk way which you could climb up to. Nobody seems too interested in this, hence it was so empty! Lol. Guess people hate steps. 

Above is another part of the garden with more rock landscaping and small pavilion. This is where seats were available and many people were just seated there enjoying the view, or too tired to walk further. 

Looking across the seated pavilion you could see many tourist around.....

I did like the emerald pool area at the other side of the pavilion. It was just a simple rock and pond and less scenic. But the water was super clear, and the pond had algae and fish and reflection on it. It was super cool and relaxing to look here instead of where all the crowded people were with the manmade landscape garden. Here, it looked much more simple, and natural. I took a few videos of the water here. Not sure if I will post them to my Youtube channel. If I do, I will link them back to this blog. 

Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - Jingqing Studio Part 1

With our combo tickets, apparently we get entry to this Jingqing Studio. I seriously did not know what to expect to see inside. On the door the sign seems to indicate  Quiet Heart? 

Here is an official info of the studio. It's basically another pavilion, but with more elaborated landscaped garden inside as you will see....

Walking in from the entrance, you first see the pond with something white in the middle. You have to walk either to the left or right of the narrow walkway to go around and deeper into the pavilion. 

I guess these pavilion weren't built for mass tourist visiting, cause the walkway was pretty narrow without much protection from you falling into the pond. It was like visiting someone's private garden, but now it's open to the whole of the world, and everyone just decided to come in. 

The place is famous for the landscaped garden with rocks looking like mountains, ponds with fishes, and bridges. People in ancient China seems to have a lot of time to admire gardens. 

A different view of the garden. I don't know, it looked kinda cramp to me. Like someone trying to put everything into a small space. I didn't feel as relaxed here at all. It just looked very cluttered. 

The fact that it was filled with tourist everywhere trying to get their photos taken meant that people were blocking you way all the time! And when we reached one of the pavilion with seats, all the older visitors were seated there. Hardly a serene ambiance. 

But since it's included in our ticket, we went in and took a look around anyway and took some photos!

Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - Water View

BeiHai Park was a ridiculously huge area to walk. Heck the whole of Beijing was huge. We walked an average of more than 30k steps a day. I don't know how I manage it sometimes. Luckily I have very comfortable boots with me. 

When not exploring pavilions or temple, we just walked around the pond area, and almost every angle we went was beautiful. You will see many repeat of this white pagoda as I find it so fascinating. 

The pond over looking a different part of Beijing at the other end was also interesting. The buildings at the other part seems so modern! Felt like almost a world away. 

My favourite might be these small canals around the pond where the boats and trees all come together.

It just felt so relaxing to be sitting inside that boat and going down the waterway. 

A different view with the yellow boats parked at the side. Love the leaves as part of the top frame.

Besides the yellow boats, there are also boats shaped like a lotus flower. Cheesy I know.....

Any wild life at the park you ask? Well, here are some birds hanging around. 

Another view of the pagoda with again, some leaves as part of the picture. 

A corner view of the pavilion where we had our snacks.

An interesting corner of the park where people can stand and read the daily newspaper, for free! So apparently everyday, they will put up the day's newspaper at these board. And you could just come to the park and read it, for free! I thought that was such a cool concept! 

If you're wondering with all the water in the park, were there any fishes inside the water? Well wonder no more! Here is a picture of the clear water with fishes inside (if you can spot it).