In one of the first pavilions, there were elderly people playing
Kevin, our loyal tour guide, wasn’t with us on this trip, so we had Susan.
The largest palace complex in the world. 74 hectares. 980 buildings. 9,999 rooms.
Construction began in 1407 and ended 14 years later thanks to a million workers and a hundred thousand artisans. 24 emperors lived in this great palace. Even after the Imperial power had been overthrown, the “last emperor” still dwelt in the palace until they were driven out of the Inner Court in 1924.
There is a picture of Mao outside the Forbidden City that is replaced every year. Why is it replaced? It’s not like he’s looking much different. Maybe more decayed.
This is probably where Mulan battled that big, evil Mongol whose name I can’t remember.
Cool door
Us
The lion’s are protectors. This one is a male because it has a ball under its paw. The females have baby lions under their paws.
The number of statues on the roof-tips indicate how close you are to the Emperor. The more statues, the more protection—thus you are closing in on the Emperor himself.
Desperate pillagers scraped the gold off of these huge vats that are all throughout the Forbidden City. Looks pretty cool now, though.
The garden in the Forbidden City is full of these rocks that were brought up from the bottom of some body of water that escapes my mind. Only the best rocks were admitted into the garden. How could you tell if they were the best? Light incense at the bottom, and if the smoke rises out the top, it meant that all the holes were connected, and so it was a good rock.
Best story from the Forbidden City: The Emperor, of course, had concubines. However, as a protective measure, the lady would strip completely naked in the waiting room outside the Emperor’s chambers, to make sure she wasn’t packing heat, of course. Then, the eunuchs would roll her up in a carpet and carry her into the presence of the Emperor. Strange? Why couldn’t she just walk in naked? Why must she be wrapped in a carpet? It reminds me of the burrito game that I used to play as a kid where you would pile up as many blankets as you could find, lie down at one end, and then have your friend wrap you up as tightly as they could. Our game, however, was fully clothed and usually ended in your mobile friend jumping on you in your burrito, not being carted around by eunuchs.
Seeing as I like giving brief history lessons about the places I go, I will continue the tradition with Tiananmen Square. However, first I’d like to note that the Chinese government has banned any Google searches for “Tiananmen Square”. Even with all the historical events that happened there that the government would support, they must be desperate to hide the traces of the massacre of 1989 from the Chinese people. It’s scary, the control a government can have, even on our knowledge and perception of the world. Our tour guide, good old Kevin, didn’t mention anything about the massacre in his lecture about the Square. We wonder if he even knows…
But back to the history lesson. The Tiananmen Gate was built in the Ming Dynasty in 1417. Tiananmen literally means “Gate of Heavenly Peace” and it originally separated Beijing from the Forbidden City. Today, Tiananmen is the largest square in the world and includes Mao Zedong’s Mausoleum. This is where communism was proclaimed and Mao announced the “New China” in 1949, marking the beginning of the horrific Cultural Revolution. Yet Chinese people still respect and honor this Square.
So what do a bunch of Americans do at a large concrete open area that we associate mostly with negative events?
