Forbidden City
Trip Start
Apr 26, 2006
1
5
14
Trip End
Sep 09, 2006
Beijing,
China
Friday, May 5, 2006
Today I met with Marie for the last time, managing to finally get the correct bus to her apartment at the correct time to complete the final Beijing sightseeing challenge that is the Forbidden City. Which really is the size of a small city. It took 6 hours to get round, with much of it in some disrepair and limited English captions beside artifacts. The delicate tapestries some which were woven with human hair were the most amazing sights for me, they were so colorful and complicated, and seeing the way the emperors housed and managed their many concubines was pretty impressive. Apparently life was very dull for concubines, as they were never allowed to leave the palace and they spent all day playing with accessories and clothes and plotting against one another. Hearing about the eccentricities shall we say of emperors in dynastic China from Marie was also interesting, and hearing about the bloody power struggles that went on with officials within the court (dynastic China seems to be popular materiel for Chinese soaps which all seem to be set in the past (brings a whole new meaning to dynasty) One emperors (apparently) would awake each morning and ask his officials to run as fast as they could across the court and see how many he could shoot. I also wandered around Tianamen square for the 2nd time, which seemed to of tripled its presence of the many different types of police/guards/public liberation army, and they seemed to of cleared the worlds biggest square and surrounding vicinity of beggars in the space of a few days. This and the banning of spitting (which frequent and loud) seem to be the most noticeable changes the government is making for the Olympics. As well as building many more high rise flats as opposed to old fashioned low level accomadation. I also tried to see Chairman Mao's mausoleum, but apparently the body was (classic Chinglish) 'under repair' By the time we had been round the square and the Forbidden city I was quite done with sightseeing in Beijing (the forbidden city is basically the Chinese equivalent of the Ufitzi) and happy to see John, Ramsey and Ollie (Johns flat mates) for some good old fashioned fun when they got back that night.
That night we ate al fresco in a cheap Chinese buffet type place, and tried Chinese Langoustines, which if I remember correctly, were called dragon prawns. We then went to see a band whose name escapes me (red Letter Post Box?) and John invited them back to the flat which turned out to be, interesting, shall we say.
The following day was a boring organizational/shopping day, except for buying a fabulous fake Mark Jacobs handbag for 20 squid (good fake handbag paradise in Beijing silk market.)
That evening Marie and her friend Paul invited me and John to dinner. Paul had an amazing flat in which the building was called "Fortune Palace" They made a really nice meal between them and Paul had good English so we all managed to communicate. That night I didn't bother to sleep (I got progressively more paranoid as the night wore on that I was going to miss my flight) and got the airport two hours early. In the que to check in I experienced my spookiest moment on my travels yet (this could also of been due to the fact it was around 5.45 AM and I hadent slept) as a young couple tried to check in two 'people' appeared behind them and simply dragged them off. Im not sure what they were doing wrong but it reminded me of something I had read, that ordinary people simply dont know, and would never know what goes on behind closed doors in this country. There is only one news channel that is in English and it seems to only report international news with a 5 minute section on China at the end. Which seems odd for such a huge country to say the least.
And then I was off to Yantai... Recommend this journal? This entry has not been rated
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