The Emperor's Crib
Trip Start
Jul 17, 2008
1
21
26
Trip End
Aug 16, 2008
Beijing,
China
Monday, August 4, 2008
We head off to the subway to get to the Forbidden City. Of course we use the out of order ticket machine and have to get assistance. Thankfully there are thousands of light blue shirted Olympic volunteers deployed throughout the city who can assist tourists. Actually most of the time they were explaining to Chinese tourists how things worked in the city.
We arrive at the Forbidden City and head to the east entrance. The security presence is noticable. Along the outer roads of the city, every intersection or driveway had a neatly dressed 'guard'. It didn't appear that they were stopping anyone so this is probably security by presence. Or window-dressing.
We arrive at the east entrance and it's closed. We trek around the outer wall to the main entrance. The Forbidden City is immense. It's HUGE. Seriously. I could look up how huge but I'll leave you to read up on it. The basic premise is that this was the winter residence of Emperors for a thousand or so years. There the emperor lived and conducted business. It was big enough for him, his family, his staff and over a thousand concubines. (Concubines had ranks. The lower ranks were not even seen by the emperor.)
Alex and I spent the entire day wandering around the City learning about the history of China, Beijing, Emperors and protocols for family and visitors. It was fascinating and exhausting. In the heat we walked at least 6 km as we wandered in and out of buildings and up and down the city.
Closing time crept up and we hadn't even seen half of what was open. And perhaps less than half of the actual city is open to the public at all.
We wandered out the south gate and headed toward Tien'amen Square. Before passing into the Square we have to take the obligatory picture with Chairman Mao's mural in the background.
The Square is huge. Apparently it was completely redone a few years ago so it's nothing like it was in 1988. But it was fully decked out with Olympic themed flower and plant arrangements. To get to the square we had to go through the basic x-ray bag scan again. The square was packed with Chinese. It's extremely apparent that the Olympics are a huge source of pride to the Chinese. Everywhere you look people are wearing Olympic gear. Olympic advertisements and attractions are everywhere in the city. At the square everyone wanted their picture taken in front of each of the arrangements. And the countdown clock. The main one is in front of a museum off to the side of the square. 4 days to go.
After seeing the square Alex and I head back into the subway to go to a theatre to see acrobats. It's amazing how you can walk into a theatre gift shop and negotiate. I would have thought that 'official' places wouldn't negotiate. Nope. Apparently anything is negotiatable.
The show was good. It was very similar to a Cirque show. The plot of this show was feuding tribes. They feuded in various ways: jumping through hoops, running around a cylinder that was pivoting (like the Zipper ride), on bicycles, using diablo sticks. There were some live birds involved in the show. Twice the birds didn't cooperate and flew off. They were trained so they flew to a familiar spot out of reach of the audience.
After the show Alex and I are tired so we hail a cab. Hotels have these cards that describe how to get to the hotel in Chinese. These are very helpful to tourists and to cabbies. We hand the card to the cabbie and he looks stumped. Granted the hotel is on a side street but it's off a main street and the main street should be easily findable. We decide if the card isn't helping then we are in trouble. To simplify things we just ask to be dropped off at the metro station that is close to our hotel. No dice. How do we get a cabbie that knows LESS about the city than we do?? Aren't there cabbie tests like other major cities?? Finally we somehow manage to show him how to get to the station and we get there.
Alex and I pop into the local WuMart for supplies. One of the staff recognizes us at this point and smiles when we enter. The first time we went in we messed everything up and had to be shown how it works. By this point we're pros. We pick up water, juice, dried fruit and noodles for the upcoming train rides. Strangely enough there is no fresh fruit or vegetables. They have fresh meat, eggs, milk and non-perishable goods but nothing fresh.
Sleep.
