My friends Tanny and Zahroof came to visit us this weekend and arrived on Saturday. Before we picked them up from the airport, Andrew, Eug and I visited the Temple of Heaven or Tiantan. This was orginally built by the Emperor Yongle and was used by the emperors as a site for conducting imperial sacrifices. This was a beautiful place with a few nice temples scattered around. On Sunday, Tanny, Zoof, Andrew and I went to the Summer Palace or Yiheyuan, a spectacular imperial garden first built under Emperor QianLong's rule and is the largest such garden in China. The place was a zoo full of foreign and Chinese tourists but we were very impressed by the place especially the structures on Longevity Hill. After that, we went out to another Karaoke bar with my local colleagues and had a fabulous time ruining nice songs though I do have to say that we did a decent job with Steppenwolf's 'Born to be Wild'.
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