a trip to the neighborhood temple...

as ridiculous as it sounds, even though we have lived in this neighborhood for five months, we only just made it down the street to yonghegong (lama temple), a former imperial residence turned lamasery and now one of the largest tibetan buddhist monasteries in the world. despite having already seen our fair share of chinese historical landmarks here in beijing, yonghegong was anything but disappointing. we picked a perfect fall saturday afternoon to spend a few hours wandering through it. it's a pretty amazing spread of architecture filled with more prayer wheels, "live" incense burners and buddhas than we have seen anywhere else, including an 18-meter tall buddha carved from a single piece of sandalwood whose base also extends something like 8 meters underground to keep it from toppling over. we included a few pics for your perusing pleasure...