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Mom did such a wonderful job on the blog the past 2 days, I am letting her do the next 2 days of entries as well!

We decided to take the shuttle to downtown Beijing with Carolyn, the nieces, and the Hippaleus gang, Sandee and her 4 kids. We then walked about a mile to the Ancient Obervatory-Gu Guanxiangtai. It is one of the oldest observatories in the world There had been three famous ancient observatories, all built in the 1500’s, this the sole remaining one. 

The centerpiece of the observatory is an ancient stone tower that looks similar to a tall watchtower. We climbed to the top, a couple of hundred steps to an open rooftop. We saw some amazing, ancient astronomy instruments there - they are huge and made out of bronze.  Most were built around 1670.

There was an adjoining courtyard which is now one of the centers of astronomy, and is being restored as a museum. There were a few rooms filled with all types of exhibits abouts the stars, the moon, ASTRONOMY.  It covered a broad history of the heavens. We were looking at items again from before Christ’s time-this is what continually amazes me about China-how old everthing is. There was a picture of a 6000 year old burial that had a layout of the four main Chinese astrological symbols surrounding the body.

 After completing our tour of the Ancient Obervatory, it started to rain and we decided to try out the subway system, since there was a stop only a few feet from the entrance, and we knew there was a stop near where the shuttle was. It was on our to do list as we had heard from our Chinese Teacher Faye that the subway system is quite nice and she was right - very clean and airconditioned. Three RMB (less than $.40) takes you anywhere on the two main lines. We got back to China World, a very exclusive hotel and shops and found the subway had an exit on the bottom floor of the mall. From there we caught the shuttle back to Carolyn’s home.  

Night, night.