Temple of the Sun?  Many people have heard of Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, but few know that the city is home to three other related temple parks as well: the Temple of the Earth, the Temple of the Sun, and the Temple of the Moon.  All are located along points of the compass away from the center of Beijing.  The Temple of Heaven is south of the city center, and the Temple of the Sun, where these photographs were taken, is east.  This is a detail of the mural greeting visitors inside the park entrance.

The full mural, known as the Sacrifice to the Sun God Mural, is now the park’s main scenic attraction.  It was built only about twenty years ago in an effort to draw sightseers to this otherwise modest park.  The temple grounds were open to the public about fifty years ago, and the park has been undergoing slow and steady renovation and upgrade ever since.

Another detail of the mural, showing sacrifices being made to the god of the sun - as was done upon these grounds by Chinese emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties.  The mural itself is a wall of flat tiles, an unfortunate departure from the dramatic ceramic sculptures appearing on walls inside Beihai Park and the Forbidden City.

Lotus blooming elsewhere in the park.  Except for the color from the many lotus blossoms on this small lake, the park was a wash of green leaves on this midsummer day.

Nearby, a family fishes in some rather murky water.  Despite its history, the Temple of the Sun is a rather typical Beijing park; visitors take leisurely walks, hide in the shade, chat with one another, fly kites, and fish.

Entrance to the Circular Mound Altar, historically the most important feature of the park.  It was beyond these gates that all the old temple business took place.  The gates are part of a large circular wall surrounding a raised square platform in the center - as in the Temple of Heaven, circular structures represent heaven and square structures represent earth.  On this day, however, the circular wall was serving a very different purpose.

The entire altar wall was covered by tens of thousands of photographs!  To be more precise, they were “lomographs”, different in concept from traditional photographs and something I had never seen before.  Lomographs take their name from the Lomo camera produced in the old Soviet Union.  Oddly, the camera started becoming popular with European youth a decade ago; students bought them up, created new ways to take pictures with them, and thus started a movement: Lomography.  This exhibit was part of the annual World Congress of lomography being held this year in Beijing.  Pictures were tiled all the way around the altar wall to form a huge and very colorful “lomowall”.

Detail of eighteen pictures from the lomowall - actually just nine, with some copied and inverted.  Welcome to the unusual world of lomography.  It’s not photography.  It’s not even point-and-shoot.  It’s just... shoot.  Simply put, lomographs are random shots of everyday life.  It makes no difference if the picture is out of focus, oddly colored, misframed, or even upside-down; in this form of pop-art, the odder the photograph, the better.  Imagine recovering every bad picture you ever shot, making multiple copies of each, and then posting all the results edge-to-edge, like tiles on a bathroom wall.  That’s a lomowall.

Lomography has become popular enough that special new cameras have been created for it.  Some take four snapshots in quick succession through four separate lenses; the result is a two-by-two-image print of four slightly different pictures.  The lomographs shown here were taken with such a camera.  A newer camera model snaps nine shots, resulting in a three-by-three-image print.

A full panel of the lomowall, with multiple copies of similarly colored lomographs used to create patterns throughout.  Because the pictures carry no message or meaning, lomography is non-controversial; that it was allowed to be displayed so openly in Beijing attests to that.  Whatever one might think of the artistic merits of lomography, it is a legitimate movement, with over a half-million practitioners now.  It certainly added a lot of color to a very gray altar wall.

A last look at the Sacrifice to the Sun God Mural.  At only fifty acres, the Temple of the Sun - or Ritan Park - is far smaller than the famous parks of Beijing, but it does provide a peaceful respite from this very busy area of the city.

Another in my “Great Signs of China” series.  A few blocks north of the Temple of the Sun is a hospital - a very special hospital.  It would appear that the word “proctology” has not yet made it into Chinese-English dictionaries.