Beijing (8) - The Amazing Race

19/05 was our last day in Beijing. We visited both the Beijing Confucious Temple (北京孔庙) and Beijing Guozijian (北京国子监) before checking out from the hotel.

The Beijing Confucious Temple is the second largest confucious temple in China after the one in Confucius' hometown of Qufu. It was built for more than 700 years ago back in 1302 and located in the Guozijian street or the formally Chengxian Street (成贤街) . We saw the 3 similar paifang or the (archway in Chinese architectural gating style) along the street.

Guozijian Paifang

The ticket (RMB20) is for both Beijing Confucious Temple and the adjacent Beijing Guozijian. Upon the entry to the Confucious Temple, we were welcome with a while Confucious statue in front of the Dacheng Gate (大成门).

Confucious statue in front of the Dacheng Gate (大成门)

There were 198 stone tablets positioned on either side of the front courtyard, and they contains many names of the advanced scholars of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. It's how respectful these advance scholars are being treated in the ancient China.

Stone Tablets with the names of the scholars

We proceeded to the Dacheng Hall (大成殿) as well.

Dacheng Hall

The next destination of Guojizian was in fact accessible from the Confucious Temple. The Guozijian was the imperial college during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and it was the last Guozijian of China. It was the highest institute of learning in China's traditional educational system.

The Entrance with the Taixue wording

There were exhibitions on the entire background and history of Guozijian, different levels of imperial examination conducted in the ancient China.

Photo showing the announcement board for the imperial examination.


One of the hall


Emperor Reading Room

There were many destinations in Beijing we did not cover due to the time constraints in Beijing. We had only 6 nights in Beijing and we were on the plan for the next destination, Nanjing. There were several misses such as Old Summer Palace - YuanMinYuan (圆明园), The mountain resort - Chengde (承德) on the northeast of Beijing, XiangShan Park (Fragrant Hills Park), National Museum of China and many others. These destinations will be included in my future Beijing trip.

We had a painful experience on 19/05 worth mentioning here. We bought night train tickets from Beijing to Nanjing so that we could reach Nanjing on the following morning on 20/05, thus saving hotel accomodation for a day. We purchased tickets earlier at a small ticket counter at one of the hotel nearby. We were told at the ticket counter the train would depart from Beijing West Railway station. When we reached the Beijing West Station at 21:05 after squeezing through the crowds and went through luggage scanning, we were so shocked to discover that there was no such train no at the digital board.

After further clarifications, we began to understand on there were a total of 4 main train railway stations in Beijing (Beijing Station, Beijing South, Beijing West & Beijing East Station) and the correct train station should be Beijing Railway Station. Our adrenalin hormone immediately shot up to the maximum as we had less than half an hour before the train depart from Beijing Railway station on 21:40 and we were still in the wrong station. It was such a tense moment that we rushed around and at the same time were trying to figure out what is fastest way to travel to Beijing Railway Station. We boarded into a taxi with our heavy luggages and requested the taxi driver for immediate departure. The taxi driver was such a brilliant Beijing driver who even sped on the red traffic lights and used whatever short cuts he could possibly think of to reach the destination on time. We reached at the Beijing Railway Station at 21:35, 5 more minutes before the train departure and yet we need to go through the luggage scanning again. Again we were like "headless chicken" as we need to run around to figure out the right platform in such a big and crowded railway station. We managed to board the train 1 minute before the train started moving. The luck was really on our end on that day the boarding gate was not closed for boarding as it usually does (5 - 10 minutes before departure time as part of the standard practise). Everyone in the train was looking at us while we were sweating non-stoppingly. What an unforgetable amazing race experience!