The Houhai Bar Street, in the famous Shichahai area of Beijing, is a place where traditional Chinese and western culture hits. When the first bar opened at a common Siheyuan (四合院, quadrangle courtyard) in the area in 2000, there were only approximately a dozen of bars in the Shichahai area. Three years later, a cluster of bars, restaurants and cafes surged in the area within half a year and now over 120 ones welcome visitors from all corners of the world every evening.
The Yonghe Temple is a glittering attraction in Beijing Buddhist firmament. It's the place where riveting roofs, fabulous frescoes, magnificent decorative arches, tapestries, eye-popping carpentry, Tibetan prayer wheels, tantric statues and a superb pair of Chinese lions mingle with dense clouds of incense. However, the pinnacle of the complex is inside the fifth hall: a magnificent 18m-high statue of the Maitreya Buddha, a messianic Buddhist figure, in his Tibetan form, clothed in yellow satin and reputedly sculpted from a single block of sandalwood.
The Clock Exhibition Hall is one of the unmissable highlights of the Forbidden City. Located in the Hall for Ancestral Worship (Fèngxiàn Diàn), the exhibition hall houses about 200 clocks and watches of different kinds, both domestic and foreign from the 18th century. Time pieces in China have a long history. Before the Qing Dynasty, sundials and clepsydras were the main timepieces. At the end of the Ming Dynasty or the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, mechanical clocks began to be introduced into China. In the eighteenth century, mechanical clocks were widely used in the imperial palaces. While reckoning time, these clocks brought motion to their decorative people, birds, and flowers. Those clocks and watches were not only useful timekeepers, but also pleasing entertainment and exquisite craftsmanship
