'Twas the night before New Year's,
The dog was all nestled (um, sprawled),
We've reached the last evening
See the dog prints up top?
This is one of those crazy houses where you tune into a radio station and the lights dance to the music...LOVE IT! (Though I wouldn't want to live near it; there was a minor traffic jam in front of it.)
Tallulah Mae is not so impressed...
I hope Santa and Rudolph brought you all good things. Mostly, I wish you all great peace and happiness and good friends. And love, lots of love. And dog kisses, too. Merry Christmas, from a foziewisp (and Tallulah, too!).
Tallulah Mae and a rather alarmed Santa wish you a very Merry Christmas (eve).
Now Santa is REALLY alarmed!
SANTA! Times four?! Has he been cloned?! (Looks as if something might have gone awry with the experiment...he is hollow and has no arms, alas...). Perhaps this is how he gets so much done on Christmas eve?
Yesterday's elf looked as if he had a secret, and now Santa is winking at us...what could it be? What ARE they hiding?
Across the street from the Forbidden City is Jingshan Park, also known as Suicide Hill (the last Ming emperor killed himself here in 1644). It was originally an imperial garden. 
Many steps lead up to the top of the hill; there are pavilions along the way. This man seemed to be doing some sort of exercises that involved his ears...
A Buddha atop the hill.
The Forbidden City viewed from the top of the hill.
You could dress up as an emperor or empress or other imperial official. We did not partake...
Then we went to the Lama Temple, a Tibetan Buddhist temple and monastery. So beautiful.
It has a Maitreya Buddha (Buddha of the Future) that is in the Guinness Book of World records because it is carved from a single white pine--and it is 85 feet high. (No photographs allowed of the Buddhas.)
Some Buddhist monks (or nuns?). They were enjoying a corn-on-the-cob snack.
Incense braziers outside each hall of the temple.
A prayer wheel.
Remember the golden roof in my previous post? Remember that golden roofs are reserved for imperial buildings? Why are there golden roofs here? It's because this used to be an imperial complex until sometime in the 18th century. More roof gods above...
Really lovely and peaceful...and (relatively) uncrowded. The end of Day Seven!
This is the Tiananmen Gate entrance to the Forbidden City. I'm standing in Tiananmen Square.
Changing of the (Red) Guard.
The statistics are mind boggling (these are all from Wikipedia): construction was begun in 1406 and took 15 years--and one million workers (!). Home to 24 emperors (the last left in 1912). The world's largest surviving palace complex: 980 surviving buildings, 8,707 bays of rooms.
These are imperial roof decorations (only imperial buildings could have them). The number (usually odd) of figures indicated status.
The roofs are yellow because yellow is the color of the emperor.
It was, of course, quite crowded, so we walked through the side buildings, the "minor" buildings where concubines, eunuchs, and children would have lived. It was lovely and uncrowded...
