Located south of the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven is both a number of temples and a large park surrounding these temples. I visited the Temple on a Saturday afternoon and it was extremely busy with tourists and locals alike.

The pricing structure to visit the park is two-fold. You can pay only to enter the park, or you can buy a Through ticket to see the park and the main attractions (the Temple of Heaven and other main buildings). The Through ticket runs you 35 RMB (~7$ CAD), so I went with that option.

All of the sights were wonderful, as you can see in my pictures below. I was just a bit surprised to be hit by another pay wall when I got to the west side of the park, at the Temple of Fasting. They were asking for an extra 10 RMB (~2$ CAD) to visit that smaller temple. I hesitated at first, but decided to go for it and it was a great decision since that temple was almost completely empty of visitors, compared to the masses that were flocking at the main attractions. So when you see pictures of a nice temple without large crowds below, that’s the Temple of Fasting.

Last thing I want to highlight were the large groups of adults and elderly who were in the park playing cards or signing traditional Chinese songs. I included some videos of the latter before and after the image gallery.