The Temple of Heaven
Hi Yanko
How was your day? Did you have a good day at work? Thanks for posting those great photos, they were beautiful. The colours and places shown in them looked so vibrant and enticing. Your blog was like a huge advert for tourism for your city and really made me wish that I could visit all the landmarks and sight seeing places you mentioned. After looking at the beach picture, I realised that I am yearning for the sea, sand and sunbathing. It’s been a long time since I had a ‘beach’ holiday; in fact the last time was January 2006 when I went to Kohl Lanta in Thailand. Teah (my one and a half year old daughter) has never see the sea or played on the beach and I’m sure she would love it (even though she’d probably eat the sand and try to swallow sea water!!) It’s a situation I’m hoping to rectify this summer.
I thought I would introduce you somewhere famous in Beijing but not the obvious places like the Great Wall and Tian An Men Square because I’m sure you know all about those two and have seen many pictures of them. One of my favourite places in Beijing is called the Temple of Heaven and I have posted a photo of one part of it below. There are so many temples all over China that some people say ‘if you have seen one, you have seen them all’ because they can appear to be very similar. The Temple of Heaven is architecturally quite distinctive, in my opinion, and the Ming and Qing dynasty emperors performed rites for the entire nation in this temple. Very precise attention was paid to all aspects of its design including colours and numbers (everything is in multiplesof three).
This picture shows the Hall of Good Harvests and I find it amazing as it was built without a single nail.
These days the temple is an all year round tourist attraction and the surrounding park comes alive around 6am with local residents(mainly senior citizens) who are doing their daily exercises and activities, everything from kite flying to tai-chi to practicing opera singing!
The language point I want to highlight today is ‘Thanks for the warmly reception’, you should use the adjective in this sentence which is ‘warm’. Warmly is an adverb and could be used in a sentence like this ‘I was warmly welcomed by the readers’
‘I have some nice friends at this cities’ contains two mistakes. First the wrong preposition, change 'at' to ‘in’ and because you have used the plural word ‘cities’ , in order to make it agree, you must say ‘these’
I’m not feeling too good today as I got a bout of food-poisoning on Sunday night and haven’t fully recovered from it. So I’ll go now and curl up in bed with a hot-water bottle and try to sleep it off!
Best wishes
Trudi
Vocabulary
vibrant (adj) lively and full of energy
enticing (adj) to attract because of hope or desire
yearn for a strong desire or wish
rectify(v) to correct a situation
distinctive (adj) very different and distinguishing
dynasty (n) period of time in Chinese history
rites (n) religious or solemn ceremony
multiples of three (n) groups of three or numbers that cab be divided by three
senior citizens elderly people
bout (n) sudden attack of an illness
Comments
Hi Trudi, I hope you get well soon. In my point of view, you are great teacher even though you are ill. Today, I love the Hall of Good Harvests. Really, it is massive temple and I expect many tourists love to travel there. In the temple, I eager to know how beautiful it is. Better luck next times.
Hi Trudi, Hope you recover from your bout of food poisoning. I could understand your interest spending time on beaches. Have you ever been in India any time? There are many wonderful beaches with much tourist attraction. I would like to give few names Goa and Coachin. If you have chances visit these places in your life time. There are many hindu temples all over India. As you said most of them are all very similar. The name size of temple may be different. But each one has got its own specialty .
Get well soon.
Hi, Trudi! Thank you for your vibrant and useful blog. I have heard about Great Wall but mentioned Tian An Men Square is news for me. I don’t know about China too much, ever about the worldwide well-known sights. You can tell us about them too. However, people are interested me more. Can you tell us about your students? Who they are? Why they learn English? What they are doing in their free time? And so on. I am yearning for stories about your students. Hope you are well now.
Hi Trudi! I hope you will recover soon from food-poisoning! I like reading your descritions about China. I got a lot new information about it also in last month.How long have you been living there? How easy could you get used to the life in China? Have you take up new habits or hobbies since you moved there? Have a nice day!
Hi Trudi. Oh my goodness! What have you eaten? I hope you get well soon :-). The Hall of Good Harvests is very imponent. Apart from that it was building without any nails. Wow! this is very impressive! Best wishes, Ana Paula.
It is very useful for improving my english ability. Thanks very much.
Hi Madam, It appears that it was common character of all Emperors of world that they wasted their precious time in useless activities and kept themselves busy in building temples, mosques and tombs only. Though, they paid little attention for benefit of general masses of those times (i.e. building of roads, development of public infrastructure etc.), but their very much focusing on these types of activities provided big leap to development of architecture art/science. The beautiful picture of temple posted by use witness it. Taj Mehal (Tomb build by Emperor, Shah Jahan in the memory of his beloved wife) situated at Agra city (150 kilometer from Delhi, Capital of India) is so beautifully build that it has been declared one of wonders previous year by World Heritage organization. Hope you must have recovered from the bout of food-poisoning and will be in your pink of health again. Love to Teah.
Hi everybody, and Hello teacher, I've been training up my english with the BBC website for almost three months. And I would like to thank you all, both the students and the teachers. It's amazing to read so interesting a website written from so many countries of the world. It's like to be in great family. And learning english starts being a pleasure! Which - believe me - it's far from usual in France...A big big thank you. Go on making me feel part of the wolrd community!Looking forward to reading you soon ! Have a nice day/ night (depends on the time you'll read this comment). Laetitia
Dear Trudi! The world is surely very small. Coincidentally, there suffered from a sudden attack of a similar illness like you even more people in my office last weak. This time of the year, there are the smallest viruses operating over our health and determine limits to our body. I hope, your Teah was fine, and your better half was giving you the best support and care. Your post is such a comfort for me when I read it at home. (I didn´t have any holiday for years except in my own flat.)My PC is broken away so at work I only take hard copies quickly with comments to enjoy your company in evenings, trying to forget all the frustration and grumpy atmosphere on/at my work place at the moment. (I wish it works abruptly for me,too!) I write a little less and it is really bad for I am having terrible problems to construct the sentence and express some simply ideas. Recently, I was perplexed to read ´the angst´, the word is the same in German, wanderlust appeared once here too. Good luck to everyone!
How doyou do, Trudi? How're you feeling now? I hope you've cheered up this moment. I'm willing to know if you're always among those people in the park by the Temple of Heaven at such an early hour? And if you are what do you do? I wanted to tell you that here in Russia we also have wonderfull buildings, generally old, such as a churches, temples, that had been erected without a single nail. Wish your dream of taking Teah to the sea this summer come true, so as mine of laying on the beach and drinking cola, eating ice-cream or whatsoever. Bye-bye.
Hi Trudi I hope you are feeling better today. I'm looking forward to reading your wonderful entries!!!! Bye
Hi,Trudi I am sorry to hear that you are not very well. I hope you are getting better soon.I sometimes feel like having no rights to be ill or tired as I still have to kick a ball in the garden, go for a bycicle ride or sing a song at the top of my voice with my son.I'd put my money on it that You underderstand what I am talking about. I've never been to China although I am from Korea.Since you started this blogs the letters have been provoked me to be more interested in China.I think you are far better than my history teachers(I used to fall asleep in the classroom as the teacher was trying very hard to wake me up by throwing small pieces of chalk on my face) and you must be rewarded a citizen of CHina.Have a good day!
Dear Trudi, Food poising! It is a real headache for people all over the world. Last week, we were busy in wedding ceremony of my cousin. She returned Nepal in one month holiday to get married. Both bride and groom are living in Sydney. Sister of bride came from the US to attend the wedding ceremony which was held on February 28th. One day before main wedding function, sister of bride get suffered from food poising and all we spend whole night to take care her. One of my sisters is a medical doctor and she took care very carefully. In the next day, my sister told me that she pretended to her son that she was having night duty in hospital and could not come and she really did night duty on ours aunt house instead of hospital. After whole night care, our cousin was able to attend wedding function though she was weak. I sincerely hope you will get better soon.
Sorry to hear you have been unwell, Trudi, a bout of food poisoning doesn’t sound very nice at all. You mentioned senior citizens in you blog; my father is one of the elderly folk also, he is 84 and luckily still able to cope with every day chores, more or less without a constant help. I just had a sms message from him a moment ago. The vocabulary you used today was again very useful; I am trying to exercise your suggestions as much as possible, so that the words became familiar and easy to use. I admit that I know most the words (tacit knowledge from my past life) but expressions are not in my active every day use. I yearn for a day, that I could use the English language spontaneously and without thinking. But then again it is a practise that multiples the skill. Teah would love the sea, that is for sure!
hi our best teacher!i'm really excited by your excellent entries which have been offering a lot of knowleage and help to me. since your first entry i benefit from your writting style and your advices.also ihave been eriching my knoleages about chines culture and hitory thanks again
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