I started with the obvious, the Forbidden City, Jingshan Park, the Summer Palace, the Llama Temple, all the places one would expect to see on a top 10 places to visit list.

But as I exhausted the more well-known sites in Beijing I began to venture further afield, setting out with no particular destination in mind, I aimlessly walked, biked, and ran whichever way I felt like at that time.

Many of my best discoveries have been purely by accident, while exploring a random hutong, or on an early morning run through one of Beijing's many parks. Its easy to get lost in these small pockets of history, but the modern world is never too far away, and I soon became fascinated with how the city has achieved the feat of striking such a visual balance between two vastly different eras

This fusion of styles is strikingly prevalent at Zhihua temple, built in 1444 during the rule of emperor Zhengtong, Zhihua was the family temple for the emperors favourite eunuch, Wang Zhen. Though much smaller now compared to at its peak of 20,000 square meters, the temple is a somewhat hidden gem, nestled amongst a maze of hutong, 5 kilometres east of the Forbidden City.

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