Forbidden City and the Great Pall of China

We didn't want to overstretch ourselves on our first full day in Beijing, but we thought we had better get started since there was so much to see there, and since the Forbidden City and Tian'anmen Square were very close to the hostel, we decided to start there.

Outside it seemed the weather had taken a turn for the worse. When we arrived it had been nice and sunny, but now a thick fog seemed to have descended on the city and it was even more humid. After a bit of debate we agreed that it must be pollution, although it was different from the black pollution of Delhi which turns nose-blowings black; this was just like fog and our snot was still clear! A shame really, because the city didn't look as nice with the thick haze between the camera and the subject.

Entrance to Forbidden City

Only the emperor used to be allowed through this gate

The Forbidden City was very impressive: absolutely huge and every massive building exquisitely decorated. It was crawling with other tourists though, which made it hard to take the photos we wanted. Chinese tourists are really funny: apart from the most common “twin peace signs” pose that they strike for most photos, they have a whole catalogue of other highly posed positions for having photos taken in; they often climb on things and they seem compelled to touch whatever they are having their photo taken standing next to. They don't seem to have much respect for objects, even ancient ones, which Joanne was appalled at. Perhaps it's a remnant from the Cultural Revolution when they attempted to erase the past and the arts were considered dangerous.

Apart from the climbing on valuable artefacts I have some sympathy for the exaggerated posing because otherwise it is easy to end up with lots of stiff-looking photos where you look like you've just been copy-and-pasted onto lots of images of famous places. Of course we are far too reserved and Calvinistically Scottish to do embarrassing things like strike silly poses, after all we are not American or Chinese, so we'll just have to continue looking dour in front of famous places – most of the time. A little disappointment was that you are not allowed into most of the buildings, but they didn't look all that interesting anyway. There were a few nice gardens inside, but again the Chinese tourists were showing them no respect and climbing over fences to have their photo taken among the flowers and so on. Large parts of the Forbidden city we off limits, but the area available to us was still huge.

Joanne copy-and-pasted in front of a great hall

Guard and Mao

Monument to the People's Heroes

Next stop was across the road to Tian'anmen Square. I think it's quite a typical authoritarian square: huge and imposing. It's flanked on one side by the Great Hall of the People with the National Museum opposite, on the third enclosed side the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, where Mao's preserve body is on display in a glass case, and in the middle of the square is the rather phallic Monument to the People's Heroes. All the buildings around the square are very impressive, but very stern. The police presence in Beijing generally had been rather prominent, but in the Square the security was very tight. We had to put our bags through X-ray machines and walk through metal detectors just to get into the square.

Don't you love revolutionary art?

The square was also very busy with Chinese tourists, having their photos taken in front of the big Mao portrait outside the Forbidden City. All day people had been giving us long curious stares; a few people had asked to have their photo taken with us, we were obviously so alien. We hung around the square for a bit just watching people and getting stared at. Chinese people all seem to smoke and there are almost no restrictions on where you can smoke. With nearly 1.5 billion people they are going to have massive smoking-related health problems unless they do something about it soon.

Another imposing street

Food!

Snack Steet

On the way home, we were almost hit by several electric bicycles. While I approve of them for environmental reasons, they just don't make enough noise for you to know they are coming. The pedestrian flow around most of the Beijing, as well, seems to be very controlled: there are barriers preventing people from crossing roads almost everywhere, underpasses being the only way of getting to the other side. We stopped off at Snack Street to see if we could buy our dinner there. Some of the food looked quite nice, but they had some very unusual things as well, for example live scorpion kebabs, various insect and grubs, sea-horses, and star fish. We decided to give it all a miss, but I was very tempted by the cups of soft drink bubbling smoke, presumably with lumps of dry ice dropped in. Carrying on home we noticed that there are loads of KFC and Macdonalds everywhere. In a Communist country? How odd!

written by

The Happy Couple on July 19, 2009 from Beijing, China

from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon

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