Our first two stops today were Tiananmen square and the
Forbidden City. Which, turns out, are right across the street from one another.
Literally. When we walked into Tiananmen Square we went past the gate of the
old Beijing city wall. On the right was the national museum and on the left was
the national congress. I had actually seen on the news that they had held their
national congress while we were there and if we had been in Beijing just two
weeks prior we wouldn’t have been allowed on the square. In front of us was
Chairman Mao’s mausoleum and in back of us, across the street, was the gate
that led to the Forbidden City. Chairman Mao’s mausoleum was closed while we
were there, but it contains his casket and body. It’s an urban legend whether
the body in the casket really is Mao’s or not but during the peak tourist
season people will stand in line for up to two hours just to catch a couple
seconds glimpse of his tomb.
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| Chairman Mao's Mausoleum at Tiananmen Square, Beijing |
There were guards posted all around the square. They stood
tall and straight and didn’t move a muscle. I heard you actually have to be a
certain height to get into the national guard there. No short people allowed. Other
than the buildings surrounding it, it really was just a big square. It’s famous
for being the place Mao delivered his speeches. Across the street on the gate
to the Forbidden City hangs a giant painting of Mao, which is replaced by a new
one every year.
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| Gate leading to the Forbidden City |
There’s a tunnel under the street connecting the square to
the city so we didn’t have to try and cross the traffic. When we first walked
through the gate, there was a court yard with rows of rooms on both sides. I
thought, this is a little small, I imagined the infamous Forbidden City to be a
little bigger. There was another gate in front of us. This was just the
reception hall where officials would wait for the emperor. Oh that makes more
sense. There were three giant doors in the gate to the next courtyard. The
middle one was exclusively for the Emperor. The door on the right was reserved
for the royal family and the one on the left was for high ranking officials.
Everyone else had to use the little doors on either side. Now in modern days
the middle door is for people with disabilities to get through without having
to fight the crowd. Our Les was in a wheelchair that day, as he would sometimes
use when we were walking a lot so he got to go through the middle door and be
Emperor Les for the rest of the day.
The courtyard we walked into was much larger than the first
waiting reception one. There was a giant building where all the official
business was conducted. Then beyond that courtyard there was another gate that
led to an even bigger courtyard that
even had a stream running through the middle with bridges and giant stairs.
This was where all the official ceremonies took place including religious
ceremonies, royal weddings and crowning of the emperor. Okay now I understood why
this place was so impressive. After that courtyard it branched off in different
directions to smaller buildings and courtyards. I don’t think we explored even
half of it to be honest, turned out the forbidden city was actually a huge city
at one time. It is reported there are 8,704 rooms in the entire place and
housed as many as 10,000 people. Including up to 3,000 concubines.
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| Courtyard in the Forbidden City |
One of the interesting features of the city is that all
around everywhere you will see these giant metal pots. They were huge, about
five feet high and at least five feet wide in the middle. It was fun to
speculate what they were for until we learned they actually held water in case
a fire broke out back in the day. There are about 200 of them all around the
city. We walked through the main courtyard that once was home to the
concubines. We got to look inside the small rooms where they slept and once you
became a concubine you never left the forbidden city again. If you had a son
you got upgraded to a bigger room and higher status. We wandered around for
almost two hours and we only saw a fraction of the city.
We were settling back in on the bus to go to lunch when
suddenly Kerry let out a yelp. She had bought a small souvenir from one of the
street vendors and the 20 dollar note she had gotten back was a completely
different currency! They had warned us about that back in Shanghai that vendors
will do that sometimes since other currency that looks similar is worth only a
fraction of their own. Honestly we were all too impressed that it had actually
happened to be upset and we had a great time trying to figure out what nation
it was from.
After lunch we visited the Temple of Heaven. The park was
full of old people playing cards which looked like a lot of fun. At first
glance I couldn’t quite figure out why the temple of heaven was so special. It
wasn’t particularly bigger or taller than anything we’d seen before. Until our
guide started explaining the temple was used exclusively by the emperor to pray
to the gods every year for a good harvest. Its roof was round instead of square
(like every other one we’d seen) and it was painted bright blue to symbolize
heaven. On the stairs leading up the
temple were gorgeous carvings of phoenix and dragons. It was a small temple but
it was beautiful.
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| Temple of Heaven, Beijing |
On the way back to the hotel we stopped at the site of the
2008 Beijing Olympic games. We walked along the road and tried to imagine
thousands of people going to watch the greatest athletes in the world compete.
The dorms for the athletes was in the shape of the dragon, complete with its
pearl! And we saw the arena infamous for its architecture. It was just a quick
stop but very cool to see.
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| Dragon dorm rooms at the Beijing Olympic site |
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