Before the new order, Beijing's Tiantan, Ditan, Ritan, and Yuetan parks were as off limits to commoners as the Forbidden City. It was a matter of propriety, not imperial scorn. These were holy places, temples not given over to feckless priests but to the emperor and his ministers, in which to conduct rituals that maintained man's fragile place in the cosmos. The presence of gawking tourists and backwards-walking geriatrics would have been as profane then as the sacrifice of a cow in one of these parks would be today.

But in the new order, man is no supplicant; he is the measure of all things. We can force rain from the heavens, send tin cans to the moon, reshape the earth to suit us. Our continuing dependence on the sun seems a sticking point, but not enough of one to prevent turning Heaven, Moon, Earth, and Sun Altar parks over to the use of everyman, who holds his own R&R a much higher priority than propitiating the gods.

Moon Altar Park

Yuetan Park lies out in low-wattage Xicheng, west Beijing. From 1530 until the fall of Old China, the emperor would arrive on this site in a white robe as innocent as the new moon itself. On an auspicious autumn evening, shortly after dusk, he would ascend the moon altar holding a white stone. Upon a spirit tablet holding the image of the moon and the twenty-eight constellations, he would offer white jade, before spilling the blood of albino oxen, sheep, and pigs.

Although no other people seem to match the Chinese for fascination with the moon (they hold a major festival over the thing, after all), Yuetan gets the shortest shrift of Beijing's temple parks. Its last serious renovation was in 1983, and has an air of stately neglect missing in the others. Perhaps this is because, aside from at Carrefour, women always take the last place in line here, and a goddess rules the moon, Chang'e, who opened a box expressly against her husband's wishes and overdosed on the immortality pills inside, producing a high so literal and ethereal it carried her to her current home, with no other company than a jade rabbit.

Fitting, then, that Yuetan lends itself best to strolling when the sun is low or vanished, when the scents of pomegranate, osmanthus, and phoenix trees swirl without heat to dissipate them. Low light throws Lanyue, Jiyua, and Yuegui Pavilions in the most romantic relief, and those who catch the moon in Yuetan Palace's double-ring pond are virtually obligated to compose a poem on the spot. All bets for navel or moon gazing at Yuetan are off come Mid-Autumn Festival, of course, when the grounds are thronged with dutiful boyfriends taking pictures of girlfriends at their most victorious.

Sun Temple Park

Call it "er-tan", not "ree-tan", lest an enterprising local charge you for an otherwise free admission, perhaps the best free deal in Beijing. Bordered by the corporate might of east Chang'an, the clamor of the Russian District, and the brand blitz of Yonganli, Ritan offers sanctuary to wage-slaves and shopaholics, better than an hour on a shrink's couch at zero the price.

Of course the valuable peace and quiet is now nowhere near the levels they reached back in the good old days. Like Incas, Egyptians, and any other civilization worth its salt, the ancient Chinese acknowledged the sun as the source of all life, and counted it an honor to give some back at spring solstice time. The bellows of dying bulls and lamb were about all that pierced the still of Ritan. But sound carries eerily well at the sun altar, in the center of the park, and ringed by a perfectly circular wall. Two lovers can stand next to it sixty degrees apart, whispering terms of endearment, and hear each other with perfect ease from a span of fifty meters.

Besides tricks of masonry, there is much to keep a visitor amused at Ritan, pockets of activity all over the park. A rock-climbing wall by the Chinese exercise contraptions, a one-twentieth scale amusement park for the sprats, and the snug Stone Boat at the edge of the lake all await the modern creature of leisure who can't have a good time unless spending some money. Giant rocks, manicured flower beds, and tree-shaded paths more than suffice for the rest.

Earth Altar Park

From the Chinese cosmologist's perspective, the earth isn't round; it's square. It's also there chiefly for farming, for squaring off and tending to in neat little rows. Hence the layout of Ditan Park - a study in all things orderly, rhomboidal and ninety degrees, making the eye yearn for a curve, a slope, the vainglorious asymmetry of Lama Temple just across the 2^nd Ring Road. Indeed, the place takes on an Overlook Hotel, hedge-maze aspect in certain corners, no treat for the claustrophobic. The relatively flat and square environs could explain why there are far fewer big noses under cameras than locals doing taiqi, jogging, and flying kites.

The whole point of the park anyway was to ensure a bountiful harvest come fall, thus every summer did the emperor offer up both fatted beeves and golden grains on an altar so small as to resemble an afterthought, compared to the roomy kill zones in the other parks. Therefore, it's only fitting to savor the best of China's good earth at the scrumptiously named Golden Tripod Attic, or Jin Ding Xuan, a massive, royal red old dim sumtorium right next to the park, open 24/7.

Heaven Altar Park

They did refer to themselves collectively as the Celestial Empire, after all; little wonder then that the Chinese pulled out all the stops for Tiantan. To the traditionally reverent mind, this was where heaven joined earth, so that Tiantan's northern outer wall was high and semi-circular, to signify the former, and shorter and squared off at the southern end to represent humble earth.

Even the emperor had to humble himself for obeisance at the altar to heaven, especially that of the winter solstice. He was locked up in the Palace of Abstinence for a few days to fast and purify himself of temporal impurities. On his approach to the altar, the procession would halt, and the highest magistrate in the land would command the emperor to kowtow three times, three head knocks a turn, for a magical sum of nine. In fact, there were more number nines during the ritual then there were in the White Album, right down to the concentric designs on the altar itself.

Numerological significance dictates the layout of the entire massive park, twice the size of the Forbidden City and at least ten times more inviting. Forget the UNESCO world heritage site status; the Temple of Heaven was influencing Far Eastern architecture well before there were any nations to unite. In the days of the Yongle emperor who built it, Tiantan was the physical representation of the metaphysical heart of the Middle Kingdom, the biggest, brightest kingdom a westerner could ever hope to see.