Friday, October 10, 2025

Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - Field of Orange and People Cosplaying


There was a corner which we accidentally went into that looked more like a western garden. There we saw a sea of orange flowers! It was like a scene of a Vincent Van Gogh painting! I guess the buildings at the background made the garden looked westernised.


Here is a different view with a Chinese structure there to remind you that we were still in China! I love this garden and also spend some time inside taking photos with the sea of flowers. They actually have some path leading in where you could walk in and take photos. 


Outside at the park area, more pavilions with more people taking photographs. 


This pavilion was closed off, so you can't enter. But there were so many people hanging around outside taking photos. We didn't spend much time here as the structure looked similar to the Confucius Temple we visited. 


Here is a sample of people dressing up and walking around taking photographs. 


From afar the costume looked pretty cool and impressive. With hair piece and make up and accessories. People in China take their photo shot very seriously! I guess it's not too expensive to have an experience like this. I've never dressed up in a Chinese costume before except that one time in kindergarten where I was performing during a Chinese New Year concert.....


After spending almost a day at the park, we finally made our way out from a different path.


Saw another nice banner of the park among these yellow sunflowers. 


Here is a selfie of me among the beautiful sea of orange flowers as a souvenir!

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - Lotus Garden

 

A string of Pavilion standing on water at BeiHai Park. Lovely scenic place, but sadly so filled with people that we just walked through it and headed to our next aimless destination.

The next favourite place of mine was this Great Buddha Hall Historical Site. But my favourite part was actually outside of the hall instead of inside, cause that was where the Lotus Garden was! Weeee! What a hidden gem for me!

When you enter the place, the above is what it looked like. A T-shaped lotus pond. Not only that, they also have individual pots of lotus lining the I of the T-shape, if you get what I'm trying to say.... I spend quite a long time here just admiring the flowers and photographing them. So here are some that I love.


Super gigantic lotus that looked like lanterns. Their leaves are so huge that so much water droplets can be found on top of them. Seriously, these looked fake! But they are 100% real!


Look at that pool of water on the leaves! 


There are also a mixed of water lilies here. 


A huge yellow one.


White ones for the pure hearted.


I know it's boring to see so many flowers, but I can't help myself from taking and posting their photos.


A mixed of pink and white with a heart shaped green leaf.


One that could be made into your desktop background photo?


Scattered leaves and a single lotus and a single seed bud. Minimalistic picture. Ok. I'm done! Thank you for bearing with me! Just had to get it out of the system. 

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

Beijing 2024 - BeiHai Park (北海公园) - Calligraphy Exhibition

 

Open Luck Shrine! That is the literal translation of the sign outside this red gate here at BeiHai Park. What a lovely name! Who doesn't want to walk through it and open up their luck to welcome more fortune!



It leads to this hall with the name Heaven King something.....


And inside the hall was a calligraphy exhibition. I was drawn to the colours here. In my mind, Chinese calligraphy is always black in on white paper. But here I saw green, red, blue and yellow paper! Mind blown! It was a bonus as I actually love calligraphy!


It was just a small hall, but with many calligraphy on display. We spend some time here looking around.


Scrolls after scrolls to be admired. They weren't too artistic and fancy like some you will see outside of China (Ahem, National Gallery of Singapore....), but decent looking one which was still beautiful in their own ways. 


Calligraphy to me is an art form, a discipline, and of course, a documentation. What is there not to like about all that? Plus, I'm actually pretty good at it too :) I did a Chinese New Year calligraphy at my home Community Centre in 2025 after not picking up a brush for maybe 30 years? But I still got the foundation for it, so the writing wasn't half bad. If I find the photo of the calligraphy, I'll be sure to post it here one day! Lol. 

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

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 :)

Monday, October 6, 2025

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 :)