Central Beijing:  Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City

I had arrived in Beijing from Shanghai the night before.  But in the morning, I felt like I had arrived in Siberia.  Because I had arrived at my hotel at nighttime, I didn’t get to see the view out the window until morning.  The neighborhood was made up of Soviet-style apartment blocks.  When I left the hotel to walk to the subway, it was frigid.  The sidewalk was icy.  Everyone was bundled up.  There were street vendors cooking up food on griddles in portable stands.  I wondered whether their fingers were frozen and how the food could stay hot.  There were long lines to enter the subway.  Like in Shanghai, there were metal detectors in the subway station.  In Shanghai, I noticed some people, usually young women, ignore the guards, also usually young women, and not put their bags on the conveyor belts.  That didn’t happen in Beijing.  Everyone complied.  Anyway, Beijing means “Northern Capital”, in contrast to Nanjing, the “Southern Capital”.  And it sure felt like I had traveled to the Great White North of China.

Tiananmen Square

On the way to Tiananmen Square, I switched from the subway to the bus.  Just like the night before, I was happily shocked that announcements were in both Chinese and English.  Same with the posted route maps.  Getting around Beijing was going to be easy!  Security was tight once I got to Tiananmen Square.  It’s necessary to go through metals detectors again to get onto the square.  Often times at security checkpoints, the guards would usher me through without using the wand or doing a bag check even though everyone else was getting checked.  I guess white foreigners can be trusted.  While on Tiananmen Square, I tried to banish any thought of 1989 from my mind.  I was afraid just the thought of the student revolt and subsequent brutal crackdown would put me in danger of arrest.

The Forbidden City–Outer Court

I had one word for the Forbidden City:  overwhelming.  Oh, there were other words, too.  Stunning.  Amazing.  Incredible.  But first and foremost, overwhelming.  It is situated on 180 acres and contains close to 1,000 buildings.  It really is a city.  I rewatched “The Last Emperor” before my trip.  As I toured around the Forbidden City, I imagined Puyi, the boy emperor, being trapped in this gilded cage.

First Ming and then Qing emperors ruled China from the Forbidden City for almost 500 years, from 1420 to 1912.  The Forbidden City was restricted to the emperor and his family, their staff, and visiting dignitaries.  The Forbidden City and surrounding areas were known as the Imperial City.  During the Qing Dynasty, the parts of Beijing that lay outside this imperial realm was known as the Chinese City.  This was because ethnic Han Chinese lived outside the Imperial City, which was occupied by the Manchus of the Qing Dynasty.

The Forbidden City–Inner Court, Gardens, and Palaces

The Outer Court of the Forbidden City is enormous, but a lot of it is open space.  There are really just 3 buildings.  The Inner Court and surrounding areas contain innumerable buildings, some of which now house museums (separate admission fee required).  This is the area where the emperor and his family lived.  The Inner Court itself is the Outer Court in miniature.  It has 3 smaller buildings in a smaller space.  As I was exploring this area of the Forbidden City, it started to snow.  I can not tell you how beautiful this was.

The Forbidden City.  Opulent.  Grandiose.  Unbelievable.  It’s many things.  But above all, it’s overwhelming.

Day 6 was the first day since a crazy day in Singapore in 2012 that I had to split the day’s pictures into 2 parts because there were just so many of them.  But a visit to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City doesn’t happen every day, so I’ll sure you’ll forgive me this time.

[Factual information is primarily gathered from Wikipedia, so you know it must be true.]