Days 97 & 98: Beijing - Forbidden City

Forbidden City
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After a very uneventful day (spent on or waiting for planes, trains and ferries) we arrive in an already dark Beijing. Hotel full so we score a room upgrade, although the room seems much as we thought we would be getting anyway- decent room with goldfish bowl bathroom (windows not walls internally).

First on our list of attractions to tick off is the Forbidden City which is walking distance from the hotel. Amazing – the scale of the place alone is just staggering, let alone the architecture and detailing. Difficult to describe in a manner to do it justice and I’ll refrain from spouting out numbers and boring you all, so it’s basically lots of large squares, temples, courtyards and palace buildings all meticulously painted with intricate detailing both inside and out. Understandably a popular sight and as such its teaming with thousands (if not tens of thousands) of fellow tourists which thankfully thin out after a few hours and it’s quiet in some of the outer courtyards. Only real annoyance was the stupid audio guides we hired – very cleverly they work on GPS and start the relevant commentary whenever you reach the appropriate section, but it’s only clever if it actually works as advertised though. Generally Jane’s started 5 mins before we got to the relevant building and mine 5 mins after – we gave up on it after an hour, our Chinese isn’t that great anyway!

Forbidden City and Tian'an Men Square

Forbidden City
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There were some great english translations on signs around the Forbidden City, including “A single act of carelessness leads to the eternal loss of beauty” and “Don’t touch the cultural relic”.

Coming out onto Tian’an Men Square we encountered more hordes of people and one small group in particular who insisted on having their picture taken with me under the giant picture of Mao which adorns the Tian’an Men Gate, whilst jointly waving a Chinese flag. As the day goes on we become more and more aware that the proportion of westerners here, even in the tourist centre, is very low. Of those it’s fair to say I stand out at 6ft 4in and many people seem to stare and occasionally point at the big freak.

Forbidden City
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Tian’an Men square is huge, but slightly grey and non-descript in the winter sun, being endless paving interrupted only by Mao’ s Mausoleum, the Monument to the People’s Heroes and the Qian Men gate (2 towers really) at the far end. Surrounding it are some equally huge state buildings, Great Hall of the People and museums. Apparently the old city wall survived here, all the way round the square and up to the Emperors Palace until the 50’s when it was knocked down to make way for the current 5 lane ring road, with bicycle lane of course (and these ones really do get used).

Forbidden City
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Took a detour route back to the hotel to see the newly built and somewhat controversial glass domed National Theatre (it’s really cool actually) and to walk around the moat round much of the Forbidden City. Along the way here we saw a presumably off duty soldier (I’m assuming general because it he’s older and it sounds better) fishing in the moat.

One oddity is that whilst many shops and restaurants around our hotel have the traditional red lanterns outside that you’d expect, their impact is often over shadowed by flashing red and blue lights reminiscent of bad school disco lighting or a major police incident. There cause is a plethora of ‘Police shops’ selling uniforms, badges (including one 6ft badge for the wall we saw and almost bought for Richard before realising it would take up a lot of room in the suitcase) and car light sets – the full American style bars that go on the roof like a roof-rack attachment. As far as we could see anyone can buy these? That said it seems to be the People’s Liberation Army that patrol the streets and fulfil much of the visible task of policing here anyway.