On 3 July 2014, my destination in Beijing was Tiantan Park and the Temple of Heaven within it. After breakfast at my hotel, I was advised to take a bus. I travelled on route 120 and arrived at the park, where I found that the journey itself was as interesting as the monument I had come to photograph.
Beijing’s parks impressed me with their size and with the many activities taking place inside them. Some people were practising beautiful Chinese calligraphy on the pavement with water, making characters that would gradually disappear as they dried. Others were singing or dancing to accordion music. They looked like ordinary park visitors, yet their voices and movements suggested considerable practice. I had the impression that people had gathered not only to enjoy themselves, but also to spend time together and perhaps make new friends.
The Temple of Heaven is one of Beijing’s great imperial ceremonial complexes. It was constructed between 1406 and 1420 during the reign of the Ming dynasty’s Yongle Emperor, who also commissioned the Forbidden City. Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties came here to perform rituals and offer prayers for favourable harvests. The complex was expanded and received its present name during the sixteenth century, and it underwent further renovation under the Qianlong Emperor in the eighteenth century.
The emperor was understood to be the Son of Heaven, entrusted with maintaining harmony between the earthly realm and the heavens. Ceremonies here therefore carried meaning beyond the walls of the temple. Imperial processions, ritual preparations and carefully prescribed acts of worship expressed the relationship between the ruler, the people and the natural order on which agricultural life depended.
The architecture gives visible form to these ideas. In traditional Chinese symbolism, the circle is associated with heaven and the square with earth. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests rises above a square terrace beneath a circular, blue-tiled roof. Elsewhere, the Circular Mound Altar repeats the relationship between circular forms and square settings. Blue roof tiles evoke the sky, while the arrangement of buildings and open spaces creates a strong sense of ceremony.
Numbers also have symbolic importance in the design. The Circular Mound Altar incorporates arrangements based on nine, a number closely associated with imperial authority. The columns of the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests have traditionally been interpreted in relation to the seasons, months and divisions of the day. These details made me look at the buildings not merely as impressive structures, but as a carefully composed expression of an entire worldview.
The Temple of Heaven was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1998. Yet during my visit, the surrounding park was as memorable as the historic buildings. The formal architecture and the informal activities of the visitors belonged to different periods of Chinese life, but I encountered them in the same landscape. My photographs record both the monument and the atmosphere around it.
After visiting the temple, I returned on bus 120. I noticed that several employees worked aboard the municipal bus in addition to the driver, handling security, tickets and announcements. At one stop, when an elderly couple boarded, an attendant asked a younger couple to give up their seats. What struck me was that this courtesy was not left entirely to the passengers’ initiative: a member of staff actively reminded them of their responsibility. It was one of the small everyday observations that remained with me after a day devoted to an imperial monument.