Ni hao!
Nan Guan Gong Yuan 南馆公园. Originally built in 1956, and reconstructed June until August 2002 by Garden Bureau of Dongcheng District, Beijing. Nan Guan Park is the first ecological water garden using reclaimed water. A reclaimed water treatment station of 720 square meters is built inside the park, which supply the water for construction of water spaces, irrigation of trees and flowers and cleaning of park after processing domestic sewage from neighboring residential quarter into first level water. The park has water sights of natural lakes, bridge, fountains and falls. It is a public park of 4.000 square meters.
It´s situated near the tiny Tong Jiao Temple. The park is a little green oasis for the local inhabitants. Nan Guan has a pleasant looking restaurant overlooking the water. It also has physical training equipments for the public to use free. I just love this beautiful park. Everybody, young and old, goes there for a walk or more. I met a chinese man walking all around the park I think nearly twenty times for exercise. He passed me so many times during my two hours in the park. Other people just sit in the shadows and relax or read the newspapers. One man played the drums at the lakeside on my last visit to the park on the 14th of May 2007. On the other side a young boy was sitting on a bench with his girlfriend and playing guitar and singing. 
So the different contrasts of sounds and silence in this park is amazing! In Beijing people go to the park to relax in all kinds of ways that they find nice. I just love it, when I sit down on a bench and enjoy it all! In Beijing people do not sit indoors after work or when they are free from work. They go out to meet other people in their own neighborhood or in restaurants, not only in the park, also in the streets, or at the stores! Everybody is outside! Everything like stores, cutting my hair or buying a new apartment is open very late at night! Anyway on this very special last day in the Nan Guan Park they did run all the water fountains for me! Very lucky me! What a great final for my one month visit to Beijing.
I get this great wonderful feeling of earlier traveling in my life. It feels like when I visited Rhodes in Greece in the 1990s! The same kind of people and the same atmosphere right here in the heart of central Beijing! Now a little bit more about the Tong Jiao Tempel (通教寺, Hanyu Pinyin: Tongjiao Si) . It´s situated at No.19, Zhenxian Alley, Inner Dongzhimen North Street. Just right across the street from the eastern gate of the Nan Guan Park. I go this way from home through a street south of the park to an internet cafe, and to the Shanghai Supermarket Store, where I buy my special garlic sausage, chinese red wine, bread and more. I will tell you more about these two places later. 
Tong Jiao Temple is a famous Buddhist temple in Beijing located in a deep alley off a back street of the Inner Dongzhimen area. It was recognized as a national key Buddhist establishment in the Han area by the State Council in 1953, and became a practicing activities. More history of this temple. The temple was built in the Ming Dynasty. In the Qing Dynasty, the temple was renamed Tong Jiao Nunnery. Expansions to Tong Jiao Temple took place after 1942, when funds earmarked for temple repair and expansion were put into use. At that time, the nunnery was renamed Tong Jiao Temple. The expanded temple, now 2,500 square meters in size, covers the gate as well as three halls inside, including a grandiose Mahavira Hall. In its heyday, Tong Jiao Temple was home to around 70 nuns and monks. 
Back in the late 1980s, Tong Jiao Temple used to be situated inside Zhenxian Hutong, which has since given way to a new residential complex (Min'an Community Area 1). Current maps show the temple to the northwest of Nan Guan Park, at the southeastern corner of an 4-way junction between Dongzhimen North Alley, Houyongkang Hutong and Min´an Street. Geographically, it is still located on 19 Zhenxian Hutong inside Dongzhimen North Alley. Today a lot of local Beijing history, but also some interesting experience of my number one park in the world!Zai jian!
Peter
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