Day 12 - The Forbidden City - Beijing, China

Day 12 - His

 

I often wonder if most people in England go to London for their

holidays. I doubt it. I suspect they will go there for a weekend but

not for their holidays. The same doesn't seem to be true here. Here

Beijing is a holiday destination. Well, judging from the crowds of

Chinese tourists that seems to be true. Today we went to Tian anmen

square and the forbidden city and, though i can't be a hundred percent

sure i think the rest of the people of china were there too.At least it

seemed so from the crowds of people trying to get in. The square is

surrounded by a fence and in order to get in you have to pass several

security check points which act as a bottleneck. The Chinese have no

problem with cramming in close and so we packed together and shuffled

through following Tory's umbrella. Tory is quite petite so it's fairly

impossible to see her in a crowd and as most of the our leaders here

carry coloured flags for their tour group to follow I joked 'what no

flag?' to Tory and she immediately whipped out an umbrella for us to

follow and lucky she did or we would have lost her several times

through the checkpoints.

 

Once in the square everything eased off - not so much because there

were fewer people but rather the square is so big. I believe it is the

largest public square in the world and it certainly seemed so. It was

huge and Tory suggested we speed 15 minutes wondering around taking

photos. 45 minutes later we managed to find each other again. The place

was huge.

 

After we managed to get back together the little umbrella was up and we

trooped off to the Forbidden city and more mind boggling numbers of

people squeezed into a small space. Well a large space really - it's

just there were so many of us. Thousands of people were visiting and

Tory assured us this was a quiet day. It seems european tourists are

still a rarity here  . I think i mentioned in an earlier post that the

kids stared at us, this time it was the turn of the teenagers. They

kept coming up in shy giggling groups and with their few words of

broken English and gestures convinced us to take photos with them. It

began to feel like we were part of the zoo and the kids were daring

each other to ask us to have photos with them. We obliged smilingly

with anyone who asked - it was all quite cute if a little

disconcerting.

 

The forbidden city is, as i said huge, it took several hours to get

round it and i feel as if we rushed through. It could easily have been

a whole day affair. As it was we were tired and hungry when we

finished. The area itself is split into three main parts - the

political area,the court area and the private palace. The buildings are

huge and impressive on the outside but rather pokey on the inside. It

is clear that the whole thing was constructed to intimidate and overawe

anyone who was walking into it. Made to make anyone who approached feel

small and insignificant and if it weren't for the hoards of chinese

children climbing over it I think we would have felt overawed too. As

it was the crowds of people made it feel almost homely. There is

something most grounding about the mixed attitude of awe, respect and

familiarity the chinese seem to have in dealing with their imperial

history.

 

Dinner was a joint affair at a local resteraunt and I have yet to

recognise anything I have eaten except to say it contains meat and rice

and quite a lot of spice - but it's good eating so I wolf it down.

Unsurprisingly I have collected quite a few little sayings over the

years a favourite one of mine being - 'ready when you are officer

Pembury' - it's from silence of the lambs. It's the bit Hannibal says

just before he kills officer Pembury and escapes from custody. I have

no idea why i like it as a saying but i usually say it just before i am

ready to go and as we were sitting outside the concubine's gardens

waiting to go for lunch i went said it to Tory. She seemed to like it

because at lunch when we had finished she surprised us all by saying -

ready when you are officer Pembury - to get us to leave - i wonder if i

have started a whole new fashion here?

 

After lunch - which finished at 3 in the afternoon by the way - we

returned to hotel. The plan was to keep one of our rooms as a day room

so we didn't have to lug our stuff around with us - a good idea - and

so we could shower and change if we wanted to before our mammoth

overnight train ride to the next city. Anyway, Tory's plan was to take

us back by public transport. This may not seem like a lot but learning

to use public transport is in fact most liberating. It can be quite

confusing to use new buses for the first time and knowing how lets you

move around a city most easily. So, hats off to her. Right now we are

in the hotel bar waiting to leave having bought water and cakes for the

journey.

 

Day 12 - Hers

Well we found where all the people are.... but, as Rob said, they

seemed to mostly be tourists from other areas of China - so I still

don't know where the 20 million Beijingers (Beiingites?) hang out.

 There is little need to go into great detail about the beautiful

palaces within the Forbidden City.  Any details beyond those Rob

mentioned can be found in any guide book. All I can add is that if I

were to be part of the imperial court, I would want to be one of the

concubines - the only ones with a garden - and quite beautiful it

is.....   We have been very lucky with the weather so far.  It has

rained heavily at night but the days have been hazy sunshine and hot -

but not unbearably so.  I could have worn shorts here after all -

unlike most of the places we have been, women are not required to cover

their arms and legs - but unlike for the men, showing any torso is a no

no.  The dress is a curious mix of traditional and Western over the

top.  I have seen quite a few young women in taffeta wedding cake

concoctions - but more in sheong sam - type tops with cropped trousers.

 The architecture around Tiananmen Square is also a mix - imperial

style gates, Soviet style buildings and the new(ish) opera house, a

modern French-designed 'egg' which caused considerable consternation

amongst the population.  There is also a building somewhere in Beiing

(according to Tory) that looks like a pair of pants with a hole in them

- known locally as the 'Pants Building' - that is equally disconcerting

to the locals.  From the top floor bar of our hotel, we can see the

whole mix - the roof tops of the Forbidden City, the Soviet-block style

of the People's Hall and older blocks of flats (and the Macdonalds),

the opera house 'egg' and the backs of a few of the traditional 'tea

house' type shops. Not any of the buildings here are really very old,

though, most are reconstructions after fires - and even the few

original imperial buildings date back less than 600 years - as each

imperial dynasty took great delight in destroying their predecessors'

edifices.  We are off now to Xi'an - a much older city, founded by a

much older dynasty - with at least several thousand terra cotta

warriors remaining.