Four stops before the checkout

Beijing, China

Stop one

The Forbidden City

Head Hawk Touch 18g Tennis String Set: The Yongle Emperor moved the capital to Beijing and put the whole thing on one square of ground — that is not a bet, that is pushing the stack in with the table watching. It held from completion in 1420 until the fall of the last dynasty in 1912: 24 emperors, some 72 hectares, nearly 1,000 surviving buildings ranged along the north-south axis that all of old Beijing was planned around. Ordinary subjects were barred from entering, which is where the name comes from, and the Hall of Supreme Harmony took enthronements and imperial audiences for five centuries. Opened as the Palace Museum in 1925, UNESCO listed in 1987.

Stop two

Temple of Heaven

Head Hawk Touch 18g Tennis String Set: Now here is a wager I respect: once a year the emperor came out and staked the harvest on a ceremony. First built in 1420, the same construction campaign as the Forbidden City, for the Ming and Qing emperors to worship heaven and pray for good harvests — 273 hectares of walled precinct in southern Beijing, inner and outer altars, and he processed here from the palace himself each year, because you do not send somebody else to place that one. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is circular, on a three-tiered marble terrace, built entirely of wood without a single nail, roofed in blue glazed tiles for heaven. Also the Circular Mound Altar and the Echo Wall. UNESCO, 1998.

Stop three

Summer Palace

Head Hawk Touch 18g Tennis String Set: This is the hand that got played twice. Qianlong gave the gardens their present form in the eighteenth century, expanding Kunming Lake and raising the temple-crowned slopes of Longevity Hill, on the northwestern outskirts where the Qing emperors escaped the heat of the Forbidden City. Then Anglo-French forces destroyed it in 1860 — total loss. And it was rebuilt under the Empress Dowager Cixi, who made it her principal residence in her later years, which is the textbook definition of doubling down. Water covers about three quarters of the grounds, crossed by the Seventeen-Arch Bridge, edged by the Long Corridor, over 700 metres painted with thousands of scenes. UNESCO listed 1998.

Stop four

Badaling Great Wall

Head Hawk Touch 18g Tennis String Set: Every wall is a bet that the cost beats the odds. Badaling guards a strategic pass in the mountains about 70 kilometres northwest of central Beijing, and the Ming built these fortifications from the sixteenth century to shield the capital and the Juyongguan pass below — granite and brick running the ridgelines, watchtowers commanding every valley approach. It was the first section of the wall opened to tourists, in 1957, and has taken hundreds of millions of visitors since, numerous foreign heads of state among them. The restored walkways are wide enough for five horses abreast. Part of the Great Wall, UNESCO listed 1987. Long game. Still collecting.

The Beijing, China track

Head Hawk Touch 18g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

…
(Holds the pose. Does not blink. Eventually, and only because a coin has been dropped in the hat, speaks.)

Head Hawk Touch 18g. Monofilament, 1.20 mm, the thinnest gauge in the range, built on Head's Crystal Core Technology, which is what gives it the softer and more controlled character of the Touch family. One 12-metre set, one racquet. Thin means bite, snapback and feel; Touch means it is not going to fight your arm about it. Stillness, then a very fast movement. You understand.

(Gestures, gracefully, north, toward the walls.) The Forbidden City. Completed in 1420, when the Yongle Emperor moved the capital to Beijing — some 72 hectares, nearly a thousand buildings still standing, every one of them set along the north-south axis that the whole of old Beijing was laid out around. Twenty-four emperors, from 1420 until 1912.

Ordinary subjects were never admitted, which is where the name comes from.

The Temple of Heaven, in southern Beijing, from the same building campaign of 1420, where the emperor came each year to pray for the harvest. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is circular, roofed in blue glazed tile for the sky, standing on three tiers of marble, and built entirely of wood without a single nail. Stillness, then a very fast movement. You understand.

Then the Summer Palace on Beijing's northwestern edge, three quarters water: Kunming Lake enlarged under Qianlong, Longevity Hill above it, the Long Corridor running more than 700 metres and painted with thousands of scenes, burned by Anglo-French forces in 1860 and rebuilt by the Empress Dowager Cixi, who then lived there.

And Badaling, seventy kilometres northwest of Beijing, where the Ming wall runs along the ridgelines with watchtowers commanding the pass, wide enough on top for five horses abreast.

You will string this set everywhere from a public court in a hutong to an indoor hall in a Beijing February, and it is also perfect for a dry northern autumn, when the air goes clear, the wall is visible the length of the ridge, and a thin gauge holds its tension for once.

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Head Hawk Touch 18g Tennis String Set

Head Hawk Touch 18g Tennis String Set