Humanity and Heaven in Communion

Ancient Chinese believed that people could communicate with Heaven, and the Temple of Heaven was built to enable this. The echo of sound at the Circular Mound Altar and the Imperial Vault of Heaven are evidence of what our forebears believed to be communicating with Heaven.

If you stand on the Heavenly Heart Stone on the Circular Mound Altar, you can hear your voice rise from underneath your feet and echo back from the wall around the Altar. The resounding echo, according to the designers, represents Heaven’s reply to whatever the speaker asks for.

When you stand inside the outer wall of the Imperial Vault of Heaven, and speak into the wall,a friend at a point farther away along the wall can hear your voice; it resembles making a phone call to someone. This phenomenon, due to the much shorter length of the sound waves compared to the radius of the round wall, gave rise to the nickname “echo wall”for the outer rim of the Vault.

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