Beijing part II. Temple of Heaven (天壇)

In the beginnig of the Chinese Dinasties, around the year 2070 B.C. (it began with the Xia Dynasty, and according to Confucius (孔夫子) (551 BC – 479 BC), the Emperor was the Son of Heaven (天子- where 天 means "heaven" and 子 , son), and he was the leader who had to rule on earth as his father did on heaven.
In the ancient China, they thought that the earth was squared whereas heaven was round, and that's why coins in the ancient China where rounded on the outside and they had a squared hole in the middle.
So, logically the Temple of Heaven had to be round. It was built by the Emperor Yongle (永樂) (2 May 1360 – 12 August 1424) during the Ming Dinasty (1368- 1644), between the 1406 and the 1420. This Emperor was also the responsible for the construction of the Forbidden City.

It's a taoist temple and has a room for the Heaven God, and it was visited by the emperors of the Ming and Qing dinasties, the last two dinasties of China.

The funny thing is that our tour didn't include this visit, so we asked our tour guide to take us there to see it. When we arrive there we met a lot of chinese dancing in the park next to the Temple. The ticket has a discount for old people. We also saw a lot of old people near the Temple playing card games.