Tian'anmen square and the Forbidden City

Another giant
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Today we went to see Tian'anmen square, as well as the neighbouring Forbidden City. Man, what a huge place....

The sun came back out today, first time we've seen it since Saturday. And "seen it" is a bit of a stretch: the smog is ever present in Beijing. The result was that it was h-o-t HOT! We walked through the square and the Forbidden City for almost 3 hours and were thoroughly soaked by the end (and so was everyone else on the tour). The teeming masses didn't help: our guide said Tian'anmen Square can hold one million people and it seemed like all of them were there today. A line to see Chairman Mao's body snaked this way and that across the square and back to the street; everywhere you looked you saw a sea of heads or were crushed into the slowly moving horde.

...crushed into the slowly moving horde...

Monumentous building (under construction)
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Twice some kids asked to have a picture with us - so two more Canada pins are now in circulation in China. It's the #1 tourist destination for locals within China, and it showed today - packed.

Tian'anmen square is the largest public square in the world - and it's pretty much just a paved expanse with the odd statue or structure, not much more. We quickly moved across the street (stuck in the mob) to the Forbidden City.

The City was the palace of 24 Chinese emperors of the Ming and Qing (pronounced "Tsing") dynasties. It's been sacked and rebuilt countless times since the 15th century; the way it looks today is mostly thanks to the Qings, who were the last Chinese dynasty (1644-1911). The movie "Last Emperor of China" was filmed here.

Beautifully detailed rooftop
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For all that time only nobles were allowed to live anywhere near the City - commoners couldn't even lay eyes on it. It was opened to the public in 1924, however, and has stayed open ever since. There's a fairly massive restoration underway now (see pics) and even with the large amount of work going on, they won't be done until 2020! The structures are enormous so reconstruction means a zillion man hours for a lot of years. Impressive.

It's almost one kilometer from one end of the City to the other, from the South to North gates (our route today). All the families came except one, so keeping tabs on all those guilos and their adopted kids was a bit of a nightmare, but our tour guide managed to somehow keep an eye on all of us. At one point Magda disappeared completely into a crowd pushing through an arched entrance, only to re-appear on the far side. It was way too easy to lose track of people.

Rock tree monument
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We made our way through fairly quickly; not a lot of time to dawdle under the hot sun. We may go back in a couple of days to check out some other parts that our guidebook says are worthwhile. One of the good things was that once we passed into the part of the City for which tickets were required, the crowds thinned slightly.

Once through the North gate, we were part of another mass of humanity heading over to the side street where all the busses wait to pick up the various tours. Our guide, who does this every week, said she's never seen so many people in her life - many tours were kids on summer vacation. Our bus was 40 minutes late so we were all pretty relieved to climb aboard and head back to the hotel.

Tian'anmen square center monument
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Magda headed off to a pearl market with some of the other people soon after we got back. The pearl market is just a regular market, with the top two floors devoted to jewelry stores and stalls, mostly with pearls. A lot of time was spent on the top floor, where the most exclusive (read: expensive) pearl stores were located. The other floors look just like the Silk market, so not much novelty there. Looks like most people in our group are getting more and more comfortable with the whole bargaining thing. It is still amazing to see that the prices we end up paying are almost always less than 1/4 of their starting asking price. Makes you wonder if anyone even pays the asking price (or even 1/2 of it). If we hadn't talked to other people who had experienced it before, we may have been happy with 50% of the original asking price (still much less than back home!).

Plans for tomorrow: a visit to the Silk museum, and to another market: the Yoesho market. Another chance to practice our negotiation skills :)