KNOCKIN’ ON HEAVEN’S DOOR

Half of our group mutinied and returned to the hotel while the rest of us went to the Temple of Heaven, where the ancient emperors would perform rituals to Heaven about three times a year to ask for a good harvest, give thanks for a good harvest, and let Heaven know the harvest was going well. There we spent minutes of fun at the Echo Wall where a person can whisper into the 500-year old stone wall and someone all the way around the circle can hear the whisper. Sadly our otherwise bright and sophisticated group could think of nothing clever to say, and was thus reduced to repeating the Verizon commercial tag line over and over (“Can you hear me now?”). Dinner was the regional specialty, Peking Duck. By the way, “Peking” is the ancient name of Beijing, and still the name of the airport.