The next key area on my list to visit at the Temple of Heaven was this cool portal! I called it a portal cause it looked so alien. Surely it was a communication portal to another realm? This is the Circular Mount Altar. If you've watched Mulan the cartoon (yes all my reference of China is from a Disney cartoon), you will see how the Emperor stood on top of this altar to get his mandate from heaven. It is just so cool. This photo is also cool, cause the sun was just shinning to beautifully there in the cloudless sky. Indeed it looked like something out of this world here!
To get to the altar, we exit the Temple of Heaven via those adorable red gates.
Here is a cooler look on the gate, and it's doors, and the horizon it held when you walk through them.
It was quite some distance to walk to, and the stone road is super straight, with cool metallic lanterns on the side. I thought only the Romans build straight roads. Ah, propaganda of the west and marketing.....
The altar kinda looked like those Chinese temple altar where you could burn offerings to the Gods, or to your ancestors. Only here, it is like a 100 times larger in concept.
Entering the altar ground itself with it's cool marble white gates of it's own.
A few steps up. It looked kinda flat, yet you still have to walk a bit up to reach the top of the portal. I guess it's pretty cool to stand in the middle of that in a raging thunderstorm! Oh man! I would love to see that!
Lastly, another reference to Mulan, a cricket for good luck! Found this random single cricket, or is it a grasshopper? Found it at the found of the altar just slightly off the main circle area. I take it that it will bring me luck in China wherever I am :)
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