So today we decided that visiting the Forbidden City or Budao "Palace Museum" as it's called here. It's a nice day, warm but not scorching, not too much pollution. Turns out it's also the last day of school holidays. These are all terrible, terrible mistakes to make in China it appears.
After squeezing ourselves into the remaining cracks on the train to get here (quite pleased we made it without getting lost though), we followed the hordes to Tiananmen Square to find more hordes. If there are 1.2 billion people in China, at least a million were trying to get into the Forbidden City this morning, all pushing, shouting, getting in each others way and so on :) Also so many tour groups, all following someone with an umbrella and a little flag. Umbrellas are ubiquitous here, people use them all the time; sunny days, rainy days, normal days. This is all fine until you realise they hold their umbrellas at my eye height and they don't watch where they're sticking them.
We were supposed to meet some people at the entrance to the Heavenly Gate (it like everything else has a giant Mao on it) but we couldn't find them. There was a guy charging people for shooting pictures of them and then printing them out on his little portable photo printer which is pretty entrepreneurial I thought.
Once we got through the gate it was bedlam. I have never seen so many people outside of a music festival, all trying to get into the shade. We got to the ticket booths and the line was hundreds of metres long. We fortunately found our friends which is surprising, and we decided that rather than push through all the crowds, we'd go for a walk around the walls and then to Jingshan Park which has a temple on top of a hill. You can see the whole central city from the temple so we decided to go there. The way around the city was really nice, lots of shade, not too many people and some people out on the palace moat in peddle boats.
On the way around, some people decided to stop and ask Jane and Anita to be in a photo with them. Not to take one for them like we first though, but to be in a photo with some strangers.
On the way past we passed the corner of the moats, fantastic view. It was a bit misty so I will have to come back when it's clearer, maybe in the winter when the moat freezes over (no more peddle boats!)
The park itself is nice, lots of trees, lotus flowers in pots. Apparently an emperor hanged himself there (the people revolted against him, successfully, and he killed himself while blaming it all on his ministers!) which is nice! The vast majority of the tourists here are internal Chinese tourists which is a little odd. Not sure where they're all from, all over I guess. It does mean that most of the guides, signs and everything are aimed at them though which can be challenging.
We climbed to the top of a decent hill, Chinese steps all have a very small rise which is tough when you have longer legs! They're really tiring to climb up, but the view at the top was definitely worth it. The temple is pretty nice, has a giant gold Buddha who looks like he's trying to burst out, Hulk-style. Well sort of. The view over the city is fantastic, we are definitely going to come back on a slightly less hazy day. The Forbidden City itself is huge.
The temple has a view out all directions, the lakes to the west of the city centre look interesting, I think we will have to check them out when we get our bikes.
We climbed back down and had some lunch. One of the things about Beijing is that there are a lot of public parks and people spend time in them doing things that at home, they would normally do in private. This can include things like singing, dancing hanging out and also going to the toilet. We were serenaded by someone when we stopped for lunch, his music all sounded like seventies film scores and he was terrible! His mum seemed to like it though, she was there dancing away and clapping after every song so I guess that's something :)
After that it was a long walk back south to the other side of Tiananmen square. We took a quick look out to the square and saw the outside of Mao's Mausoleum, or the Mao-soleum as I shall be calling it from now on. This will need a return visit, as will the inside of the Forbidden City on a different day. It does look like it will be really pretty once the weather cools down so I'm looking forward to it.
As it is though, after all the walking on stones (bloody Beijing is all stones, concrete and marble), my feet need a couple of days rest. Back to the air-conditioned comfort of the apartment to enjoy the market food from yesterday and rest a little.
No comments:
Post a Comment