By Mark Leff

"Spectacular," said the small Australian woman, as she gazed at the back of a man in front of her. "Yeah, if you're six feet (1.8m) tall," said a nearby American, who isn't.

They were among the thousands of people gathered at Beijing's Temple of Heaven on a chilly winter afternoon to watch the park's latest effort to create a living past for one of China's most spectacular sights. Twice a day during the Spring Festival New Year's holiday, a modern-day surrogate for the Qing dynasty emperor (Qianlong is perhaps the best known outside China) marches solemnly with his guards along a portion of the broad Danbi bridge that links the northern and southern parts of the huge temple complex.

That itself is a break with tradition. When the real emperor traveled south from his Forbidden City palace to pray at the Temple of Heaven each year on the winter solstice, ordinary people had to stay inside; it was a crime to look at him. Times have changed, of course. China's last emperor Pu Yi, who lived through two revolutions and performed the ceremony in the early 20th century, died a commoner in 1967. And in the Celestial Empire, ordinary people weren't paying RMB10-30 ($1.46-4.39US) for the privilege of seeing a living replica of the Son of Heaven.

But why, wondered one visiting Chinese college student – a native Beijinger – would so many people come to Tiantan Park when they can see the same thing on television? Indeed, the non-Chinese tourist who flips through the dozens of channels available on most hotel TV sets can see hour upon hour of historical costume dramas on China Central Television and many regional stations. Beyond the annual reshowing of "Journey to the West," a supernatural series based on a real fifth-century monk's quest for enlightenment in India (a fantastic ancestor of L. Frank Baum's "Wizard of Oz" and the long-running British TV series "Doctor Who"), there are dozens of tales of power, politics, love, and war that differ only in the characters' costumes and hairstyles.

Still, the visitors come to Tiantan Park in their thousands – so many people that this year, China's Xinhua news agency reported that park officials extended the route of the emperor's procession by 20 percent. Before one recent afternoon performance, an artist sketched the gathering throng. His vision on a two-meter canvas was less crowded and more graceful than the real thing. From his seated vantage point, the sea of people completely obscured the spectacular Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests that he was reproducing in faithful detail.

People clustered three and four deep all along the 250-meter rope barrier to watch the colorful procession, or at least to hope that their still and video cameras, held aloft on rapidly-tiring arms, would give them a better view of the event once they returned home to watch it on a computer or television screen. Some hoisted babies instead, letting the so-called "little princes and princesses" of China's one-child families see a part of their "royal" heritage that they're probably too young to understand.

And for those without cameras, a TV crew from the park itself was on hand to record the spectacle with a camera mounted on a long jib, or boom, that produces the swooping wide shots that are a staple of rock concert videos and Chinese TV variety shows. The crew chief didn't say what would happen with the video they were shooting; it could end up in a documentary or on a DVD sold at the obligatory gift shops scattered around the park.

In the procession, guards in colorful robes carrying horns, banners, and imperial symbols precede the emperor as he heads from the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests toward the Imperial Vault of Heaven to the south. Xinhua reports other changes this year include having the "emperor" moving, so that more people can see him, since they can now do so without fearing that he'll be the last thing they see.

Once the thirty-minute procession is over, the performers, wearing quilted trousers under their elaborate robes to help keep out the cold, have a few minutes to swap spears and other props in a nearby area closed to visitors. Then they and the spectators make their way back to the Hall of Prayer for a second show, where the guards offer a series of salutes as the emperor offers prayers and drink to heaven in hopes of a good harvest.

This show is easier to see, but the performers are farther away. Spectators can spread out along three sides of the large temple courtyard and on all three levels of the elaborate terraces leading up to the Hall itself, which is one of Beijing's more spectacular sights – rebuilt in part with American timber in 1890 after a lightning strike and fire destroyed the 15th-century original.

On this winter day, there were relatively few foreign faces visible in the crowds. Most were Chinese, talking to each other in accents and dialects from all parts of the country. Guides waving flags with company names in Chinese led groups of tourists around. On their own, two women were escorting an older woman in a wheelchair. One – her daughter - said they'd come from Shenyang in Liaoning Province, a journey that can take from 4 to 18 hours by train.

Even during the Spring Festival, not everybody comes to see the shows. While posing for touristy photos with a Chinese friend, American Rami Pelly, a Beijing-based corporate jet pilot, said he was visiting the Temple of Heaven for the first time. They had arrived too late to see the performance. He said he didn't know exactly what the temple was yet, but called it "pretty amazing," adding that he was "used to the grandeur of all the different cultural relics here in Beijing." As for the crowd, he said it was much like the Forbidden City in summer.

But the Temple of Heaven park is four times the size of the Forbidden City – covering nearly a square mile (270+ hectares) of south central Beijing, so a lot more people can fit inside. Even without the Spring Festival live performances, it is a must-see for any tourist, foreign or domestic. Once the afternoon spectacle was over, some headed for the Imperial Vault of Heaven, with its famed Echo Wall (too too many people to be able to hear hear) and the Circular Altar at the southern end of the complex. Another more mundane attraction is the nearby cluster of snack bars and souvenir stands (along with the decidedly non-imperial toilets, which can be hard to find despite the abundant but sometimes confusing signs throughout the park).

There are many other impressive sights around China's modern-day capital, but for Beijingers and visitors alike, the Temple of Heaven is, in one sense, the city and the nation in miniature. In 1944, Oscar-winning American film scriptwriter Julius Epstein and director Frank Capra made the Hall of Prayer a symbol for the nation as narrator Anthony Veiller intoned: "China is history. China is land. China is people." That is just as true today.

Mark Leff is an American broadcast journalism professor teaching this year at the Communication University of China in Beijing.

(China.org.cn February 4, 2009)