As the sun crept lower and the shadows longer, I sat on a wooden bench under the magnificently decorated ceiling of a former emperor’s main boat dock at his manmade lake with bats flitting about after bugs. The auspiciousness of bats was only equaled by the glow of the White Dagoba atop Jade Islet across the water and Jingshan Park’s pavilion aloft on its manmade pedestal of a hill behind. I had just spent the last few hours wandering this former imperial garden and was waiting for friends I would be meeting up with later.
Beijing’s Beihai Park is situated just northwest of the Forbidden City. 
Its white tower tops a hill like a birthday candle on a cake and can be seen from miles around on a clear day. Called Beihai, or North Sea, this park is one big lake with lovely gardens acting as barriers around the perimeter. There are some temples and special pavilions too almost all of the classical Chinese architecture known from the late Ming and Qing dynasties.
The plan was to meet friends that evening at the park for some fun. However, the buildings close around five, so my friend Aaron and I went earlier to visit some of this old imperial park. We started at the most iconic structure, the White Dagoba, on top of the Jade Islet.
This island was allegedly created by the dirt scooped out to create the lake by Kublai Khan (son of Genghis Khan). On top of the mound the tower was originally built in 1651 but rebuilt in 1741 after an earthquake. You can still see the cracks from that and another later earthquake. It was built to honor a visit from an important Buddhist figure. At one point it must have been used for defense too since there are small, very old cannons in place on the platform. This makes sense since it is one of the highest points in the center of Beijing.
Climbing up the south side of the hill is the Temple of Eternal Peace or Yongan Temple. We were already on top, so we did the temple backwards from the top down. My favorite part of the temple are the roofs. The tile pattern is beautiful and the finial decorations are unique to any other I’ve seen with a man riding a rooster instead of just the sons of the dragon.
This temple is pretty standard for a Chinese temple with its succession of halls each with their own worship areas. There are beautifully carved and painted statues and murals in many of them worth a gander. Be sure to go in the side buildings too to see Buddhist relics. Also, go up the towers on lower level and visit the caves. The towers offer some nice views of the surrounding area and the caves have a lovely collection of Buddhas.
At the entrance to the temple are some beautiful bronze bixis or dragon turtles as well as large Chinese lions. A bridge leads across the lake to the south entrance of the park. A look back from that side provides the iconic image of Beihai with the lotuses.
By the time we were done with this, Aaron had to get to work, and I didn’t have much time to see other buildings as they were closing soon. I wandered around the island a little more, down a lovely rounded covered walkway and found some bixis with steles on their backs. It was a lovely walk with some unexpected surprises around each corner.
After exploring the island, I walked along the lake to the north gate and then along the north side. The buildings along this side were not open but the nine dragon screen was visible and the outside of some buildings were pretty magnificent. After wearing out my feet and still having a while before meeting up with my friends. I bought a bag of chips and bottle of water, found a seat on the main boat dock on the north side of the lake and relaxed.
My fifteen minutes turned to thirty and then forty five. An hour passed in this daze. Locals started gathering for their evening exercise groups as it got darker and surprisingly the historic edifices of the park did not light up. I left my perch and found my friends outside the north gate around 7 pm. We went across the street to Houhai Lake for dinner, and around 8:30 when we tried to go back into Beihai, which had 9:30 as its posted closing time, we were told to leave by the gate keeper who was locking up.
I’m glad I got my afternoon at Beihai Park. I’d like to go back and explore the other temples and pavilions someday too, but I’m not sure if that will compare to my magical hour on the dock with a cloud of bats darting about while the sunset cast its parting glances toward Beijing.
