Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City

We woke up today ready to hit up the counter to the Summer palace. We were able to ride the subway to tiananmen Square but we weren’t exactly on the ball with figuring out which entrance we needed to go out of. Our first exit took us to the forbidden city, our 2nd try was on the side of Tiananmen but we couldn’t get across the street, so we went back down and across to finally get out the right side. This included several trips through the baggage scanners. Whenever you board the subway, when you purchase your tickets, you have to have your bag scanned. Well, at tiananmen, which also includes Mao’s mausoleum, you have to scan it on your way up to the square as well.
We wandered into Tiananmen square, and at least for me, it was really interesting to be on the spot where the demonstrations were taking place nearly 20 years ago already. Unfortunately, since it was New Year’s, the place was already getting pretty packed at 10am. From the square you have a great view of several huge buildings, that don’t seem to be quite as big as they are due to the immense size of the park. We guessed that Tiananmen to be probably 4 x 8 city blocks, potentially more. Including the entrance to the forbidden city with the huge portrait of Mao, the PRC Legislature building, and the National Museum (and all of it’s gorgeous propaganda) and towards the back Mao’s mausoleum with a monument to fallen revolutionary soldiers towards the middle, you just feel like it goes on forever. We decided we’d like to go to Mao’s mausoleum, but this included a trip out across the street to check our bags because you can’t take anything into the place. So of course when they were asking what we had we said we had a camera, which incurred an additional 5 yuan fee. Which is crazy because they say they refuse to take cameras, but then you have tons of people taking cell phone pics on their way in. We made our way along the long line on into the tomb, but noticed that they were selling flowers to place inside for 3 rmb each. This was pretty hysterical to us, because we figured that it would make perfect sense to have them gather up say, half of them every hour and just resell them. The entrance includes a huge statue of Mao sitting on a chair that seems a straight parody of Lincoln in his memorial. We were also surprised because this was one of the only times we’ve seen people quiet down in public here. We ushered through the burial area, but that’s misleading, because Mao was filled with embalming fluid so he’s preserved. So we made our way out and down the outside along a long sloping exit and took a look at the very communist statues they had on the outside here as well. We went back, picked up our stuff, and made our way over to the forbidden city. This place was funneling tons of people into it, and was just absolutely packed.
The Forbidden City really earns it’s name. This place exemplifies China again in the sense of scale. Once we had entered, we walked for oh, two blocks or so to get to where we purchased our tickets, oftentimes being pestered to see if we needed tour guides either for the Forbidden City or the great wall etc. We snagged our tickets (we again opted for the all-inclusive ones) and made our way through the huge doors. Lots of the doors here have numeous golden nubs on them. In China, 1,3,5,7,9 are all associated with yang (masculine) (while even numbers are with feminine yin) with 9 being pretty much reserved for the Emporer. So 9 sets of 9 is seen as particularly auspicious, hence the large doors. We spent the next several hours in the place, with still more things to see by the time we had finished. There are three major temple halls in a straight line on back, with innumerable buildings along the sides and such. We walked more or less straight back for nearly half an hour just passing one after another of these huge pavilions with a large temple in the middle. We started poking around the sides to see the museums and such they would have, hoping to catch several the major sights we wanted to see. We also purchased some tickets to go back into a ‘treasures’ section, with an additional bonus of weeding even more people out making it much more quiet and enjoyable. There were many different displays, including ancient rocks carved with poems talking about the activities of the Emperor, musical instruments, gifts given and received by some of the last emperors, and the like. There was also a huge marble and iron area that was filled with water and did something awesome, but we didn’t see any signs in English. One of the coolest factors of this whole experience was simply the walk. With these 20ft high walls everywhere, it made turning each corner like opening a present since you had no idea what you’d find. Furthermore, you could get anywhere even if it was off the beaten path in a sesne. For example, walking around the backside of a building would likely take you through a small door along a backway, but still allow you to continue on without having to double back. At one point we found our way to the three story opera performing stage, that included 8 trap doors (3 on the 2nd story). This place also had a fantastically intricate reproduction to showed all the specialties of the stage. We then continued on try to find our way to the north west corner to see one of the four arrow towers. We got fairly close and took a great picture of it but didn’t bother actually getting all the way there. Our walk continued on to the Imperial garden, but we had gotten to the north end and got the middle and just made a bee-line towards the south end where we had entered. This was actually really neat because we got to go through every single temple and such placed on the major north south axis. Each time we came through a doorway and saw yet another 200m long open pavillion with a huge temple, we asked ourselves “is this the last one?”. Seriously, there had to be at least 5 of these. We finally got back to the front though and made our way over one of the 5 bridges of Confucian thought and on out. As we were getting towards the exit we had the pleasure of hearing a little kid behind us puke. We walked a bit, then heard the poor guy get the rest of his food out onto the pavement. I made sure to note to bethany the potatoes and carrots I saw, which she greatly appreciated. The best part of this was that since people here are ALWAYS hacking up lougies, we often were joking it sounds like they’re throwing up.
As we were making our way to the subway, we starting chatting with two women who said they were visiting from other parts of China. We talked with them for a bit and as we were about to head down to the subway, they asked us if we wanted to grab some tea with them so they could practice their english and such. We said sure (whoops!) and we started walking to a place to snag some tea. Little did we know we were getting pulled into a tourist trap. I think our guard was down due to the adorable little boy from the previous day out at the Summer Palace who wanted to practice his English with us. Another clue should have been how they took us out to this tea place a ways away with no problem finding it. (again, hindsight is 20/20 eh?) So we tried some different teas, which were admittedly pretty awesome, and then had one pot of some great tea. Then the bill came: 385 rmb each. So, only 65$ each! So basically we got burned. We did get a free thing of tea on our way out (which has been the subject of many subsequent jokes: ‘free with 100$ purchase!’ or after dropping two little tea pieces on the floor and trying to put them back into the tin, bethany – ‘don’t, those were on the floor!! Although, at this price, we probably can’t affort to waste it!) So we made our dumbstruck way back to the subway, said goodbye to our swindlers, and were pretty much skulking the rest of the way back to our hotel. Live and learn though, right?
At 5:15 Andy came and picked us up for our dinner and Beijing opera event we were going to. Dinner was at a very nice restaurant and included several different dishes, along with peking duck, but admittedly the sweet and sour stuff was the best :-P. (bethany did love the duck though, ‘it melted in your mouth, tasted like turkey with crispy fat on it!”) It was kinda funny because andy and our driver were eating a couple of tables over and he would periodically come by to tell us something about the food and whatnot. It almost had a 3rd wheel / bad sitcom feel to it, but it was nice of him. Afterwards we went to the ‘opera’ house which was built very much like a dinner theatre inside of a hotel and was packed with foreigners. But whatever. It only lasted an hour, but had three short acts that had various traditional theatre styles to them. The first had a great acrobatic fight scene that was pretty humerous. The second act was a true ‘traditional theatre’ act. Which scared the bejeezus out of the french people in attendance, because after it finished, they began to leave in droves. Like, we had people sprinting for the exit before the third act’s curtain finished coming up. The third act was another acrobatic scence, but had quite possibly the greatest, most well crafted, magnificent prop I’ve ever seen in a theatre. Lemme just say you should check out the photo of it to see what I mean, as words can do no justice. Afterwards andy took us back home and we got ready to crash because we were getting up bright and early the next morning for our trip out to Mutainyu & the sacred way.

Day 3 Observations: outside of many places that require tickets for admittence, people camp out and wait for their (more affluent?) friends to make their way through along the outside gates. It’s a lot like leaving the secure section of an airport.
Getting sucked into tourist traps suck. Real bad. Unfortunately, it makes us really pessimistic about meeting people who are actually interesting in chatting etc.