July 22, 2010
Brian and I visited the two most iconic Beijing locales this day; Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Malva sat this one out, because if you've been to the Forbidden City before, you have little motivation to go revisit on a hot summer day. Tiananmen means Gate of Heavenly Peace, which is the enormous Ming Dynasty gate that Mao stood on to announce the beginning of the People's Republic of China. You know which gate I mean. Here's a picture of it in the lovely Beijing smog.
I'm sure there's a way to take relatively uncrappy pictures through smog, but I don't know how or whether my little camera is capable. Photography was tough in Beijing. Most of the time the screen was whited-out due to the extremely diffuse sunlight. So, I often couldn't tell what I was taking a picture of.
We started off the day in Tiananmen, where we were immediately spotted by a "volunteer tour guide" (she kept saying that she was a volunteer, but volunteerism is not big in China, so she was probably being paid to say that) who offered to show us around the gate on the southern side of the square. Apparently this was a pretty special opportunity, because that gate is rarely open to visitors. So, we went ahead and followed her inside.
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| Lovely southern gate. |
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There was some kind of compass-like design on the floor. Our guide explained that if we stand with one foot on either side of it some kind of something would happen. Can't really remember.
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| An Emperor. |
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She tried to get us to guess at the meaning of some paintings that were for sale. Honestly, we weren't great at it. Do you know why there are seven little boys mooning the viewer in this picture? For the seven days of the week of course!
Standing in Tiananmen Square, you start to feel what it means to have 1 billion people in one country. It's kind of a creepy feeling, thinking of all those people and the enormous job of supplying all their needs, physical or otherwise. I did get a photo of the cutest thing we saw in China.
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| Super cute with her PRC flags. |
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All around Beijing we saw lots of families out and about lavishing attention on their one toddler. We didn't see many school-aged children. Malva explained that this is because they are too busy studying. It takes a lot of work to become literate in Chinese.
The Forbidden City really is a huge palace/city built for use by only the Emperor and his family and minions. It was actually staffed by thousands of eunuchs, because no man could be in the Forbidden City after nightfall, thus ensuring that any progeny of the Emperor's wives or concubines were truly his. If you look at a map of Beijing you'll get an idea of the scale of the thing. It takes up a big chunk of the center of the city. The repetition of red walls and sloped golden roofs is truly beautiful and impressive. However, the whole complex is paved with stone and you walk down narrow corridors between nearly 1,000 tightly packed
buildings, lending the impression of being indoors when you're not.
I found the experience hard to comprehend. This enormous structure was built for the care, keeping and exaltation of just one man or rather, just one at a time. It is the epitome of 2,000 years of Chinese art and architecture, and yet for so many years the citizens of China could not look upon it. When I first heard the words "Forbidden City" I imagined a remote, inaccessible, mountaintop village retreat for the Imperial family. But, it was smack in the middle of an ancient metropolis and yet withheld from the bustling masses that surrounded it. Mind-boggling. Even more mind-boggling is the fact that when you're standing in it, it is swarming (I want you to really think about all the connotations of 'swarming') with people, making it quite difficult to imagine the isolated life its former occupants must have lived. I think it would have been miserable to live somewhere so oppressively planned and inorganic. The place was overwhelmingly crowded, especially in front of the tourist entrance. We ended up standing in the wrong line, having to go back to the ticket line and then rejoin the original line. Due to lack of comprehensible English signage in China and our inability to understand Chinese, this sort of thing continued to occur until the day we left. While squashed back into the line to enter the City, the little man behind me sneezed twice directly onto the back of my neck. Then he looked confused by the horrified expression on my face. On the other hand, there were plenty of lovely sculptures to look at.
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| I love this turtle-dragon. The dragon symbolizes the Emperor and the turtle symbolizes longevity. |
When we became hungry, I approached a guard and said my approximation of the word "eat," which sounds something like "chur." He repeated it, looking confused. So, I said it again, gesturing eating with chopsticks. He laughed at me and pointed to a building that looked exactly like all the others which turned out to be a little restaurant. It wasn't awful, for tourist attraction food. The steamed dumplings were good.
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| Biaozi (steamed dumplings), beef stew and cold duck salad. |
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| Brian's best dragon impression in front of the 9 Dragon Frieze. |
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| What a manicure. |
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| This chrysanthemum motif was everywhere. |
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Hot and exhausted, we made our way to gardens at the back of the palace. They were not impressive as gardens, but we found our favorite surprise in the city was a temple built out of piles of rock.
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| So cool. | |
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Traditionally, before or after visiting the Forbidden City you're supposed to walk up Jinshang Hill, across the street to the north, but we were wiped. So, we saved that for another day.
I don't remember where or when we saw this, so I'm throwing it in here. That donkey is really little. You can't tell from the picture, because the driver is little too.
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| Bonus donkey cart. Selling melons. |
