After paying forty-five cents to get into Zhongshan Park next door, you pay only thirty cents to get into here, the Workers Cultural Palace.  Compare that to the Forbidden City, just north of both these parks, which will set you back about nine dollars.  Don’t let that fool you: despite the far lower price and the far fewer people here (and the non-inspiring name), the Workers Culture Palace is rather important.

The Workers Cultural Palace is home to the Imperial Ancestral Temple.  Ahead here on the right is the first of the temple’s three buildings, the Hall for Worshiping Ancestors.  Because ancestor worship was so important to the Ming and Qing dynasty emperors, the Hall was made two meters taller than the tallest hall in the Forbidden City, to indicate its unsurpassed importance.  That’s right: this building is more important than any you will see in the Forbidden City.  Now, isn’t that worth thirty cents?

Another indicator of the Hall’s importance is that it sits atop a three-tiered platform, shown here, as only the few most sacred structures in Beijing do.  (The Temple of Heaven is another.)  The platform is made of white marble.

Nasty-looking creatures guarding the temple, also made of white marble.

The view from the north side of the Workers Cultural Palace, across to the southeastern corner of the Forbidden City.  Like the Altar of Land and Grain next door at Zhongshan Park, the Imperial Ancestral Temple here at the Workers Cultural Palace was created as a part of the Imperial City back in the early 1400s.

This characterful old wall at the Workers Cultural Palace has been through a lot, but no doubt it will be cleaned up in time for the Olympics in a couple of years.

Perhaps some of these replacement wall tiles will be used for that very purpose.

Cypress and rock at the Workers Cultural Palace.  In essence, the Workers Cultural Palace is the Imperial Ancestral Temple surrounded by a cypress forest.

Roof tiles in the Workers Cultural Palace.  Oddly, there’s a tennis court on the park grounds near this spot, looking totally out of place.

The Hall for Worshiping Ancestors.  Three staircases on its marble platform can be seen leading up to the Hall.  The middle staircase was called the Carved Stone Way of the Gods, because only the gods could use it.  And only the emperor could use the eastern staircase, on the right.  Everyone else had to use the other staircase.  The tradition continues to this day, at first-class / economy-class check-in lines at airports.

Detail of the double eaves of the Hall for Worshiping Ancestors.  The characters, in Chinese on the left and in Manchu on the right, translate to Imperial Ancestral Temple.

Marble railing along one of the seven short bridges that cross to the front of the Imperial Ancestral Temple in the Workers Cultural Palace.  If you leave through the park’s northwest gate, you’ll be just steps from the south entrance to the Forbidden City, our next stop.