Today was our final day in Beijing. We were booked for an evening flight, but had the entire day to sight see. We decided to explore the Forbidden City and Tian’an men Square.
The Forbidden City can be seen out our hotel window, but it is a fair walk away. We tried to get a taxi to take us, but there is a law in Beijing that the taxi’s can only have four passengers. The taxis all drive past us and the drivers shake their heads no at us. They don’t want the 200 Yuen fine that the police give them. We had been able to get a taxi a couple of times, but only if we do it in a crowd and the driver doesn’t realize we have five people until we are already in. Poor Claire has to stay low while we are driving in the taxis in Beijing.
We had a nice walk to the Forbidden City. We strolled through some interesting neighborhoods to get there.
I noticed about every 50 feet are two pay phones.They are big and orange and remind me of the 70’s. I hardly ever see payphones in the US anymore.
It felt like we were seeing some of the real life here and not just the touristy stuff. The one thing I have noticed in the two cities we have visited in China is they are about 15-20 years behind us in everything. We don’t have very many uniforms now in the US, even in the fast food restaurants the workers where jeans and maybe a matching t-shirt, but rarely uniforms. Even banks in the US have a casual dress code today. China is into uniforms just like we were before the 90’s, head to toe (often they have some really ugly hats to go with their uniforms).
Every restaurant, every store, street workers, even the guys cleaning up gum stuck to the street have a matching uniform. (In this picture they roped off a 40x 40 square foot area and all the workers scraped gum off of the tiles on the walkway. Can you imagine having that job? Ugh!)
In some of the restaurants the uniforms are really ugly and degrading looking. I thought maybe it was just Shanghai, but in Beijing it’s very similar. Other things that remind of the 70’s and 80’s (and in some cases the 60’s) are barber poles at every hair cutting establishment, lots of smoking every where (and mostly by men and usually in restaurants blowing our direction), no seatbelts (they are only required in the front seat, in the back seat they are buried underneath seat covers so you can’t get to them...even in the private cars we have ridden in) or car/booster seats, people's lackadaisical attitudes toward littering and recycling, industries disregard for the environment or worker protection, selling puppies on the street out of boxes, and the zoo and it’s attitudes toward the animals and the small enclosures.
And while I say they are about 20 years behind us in everything, I also notice they are pretty progressive about certain things, such as there are TV screens installed in walls every where advertising various items (we have a really nice flat screen tv in our apartment...even though we haven't watched it all because it's all in chinese). I can’t tell you what they are advertising or what the people are saying, but the screens are every where.
The lobby of our apartment has two screens. I have no idea what is on them, they are just noise to me, but they are constantly on and blathering something.We made it to the Forbidden City and it is huge. We spent at least four hours there and near the end we were rushing to get through it so we would have time to eat and catch our plane. We are constantly slowed down by the volumes of people wanting to stop and take our picture. Claire is done with people taking her picture. She tells them “Bu Yuo” and we say she is shy and they say okay, but as soon as they think we aren’t looking they take her picture anyway. I have to admit it’s getting really old. The ultimate for me was on our plane ride to Beijing I was motion sick and not feeling very well and this group of business men were taking my picture without my knowledge. I didn’t realize it until half way through the flight. I feel a bit like the baboons at the zoo.
The Forbidden City must have been an amazing place at one time. I could almost imagine the Emperor, Empress, dignitaries, ministers and all the servants buzzing around. The entire city of Beijing is all about the past emperors. By the third day of sight seeing in this city the theme is quite obviously about the past rulers of this country. Claire said when we were leaving for the day, “Are we going to see more about the Empress today?” She’s more about the lady leaders and less about the emperors. Gotta love her! The original Forbidden City was completed in 1420 and has been restored several times due to fires. 24 different emperors ruled here for nearly 500 years. The palace was the exclusive domain of the imperial court and dignitaries until the abdication in 1912. In 1949 it was then open to the public.
There is a great deal of yin and yang in the design of everything; it is the key to Chinese design. Odd numbers represent yang and apparently the city has 9,999 rooms. Each door has 81 brass studs, nine times nine is especially lucky.Most of the signs have a limited amount of English on them, but not enough for me to find the answer to where the yin was used in the designs. The yin is the feminine balance of the yin and yang, the yang being the masculine part.
In this picture there are roof guardians (all associated with water), an odd number of these figures to protect the building from fire.
This is a picture of the Imperial gardens, it’s really beautiful and peaceful in here (or it could be without the other 1,000+ visitors at the Forbidden City today). The rocks that you see with the giant holes are from the local lakes (I think I followed that right) and it was a favorite decoration of the Emperors. They use these rocks in every place we visited where the Emperor resided. 
This picture is the quarters of one of the more recent Empress’; it has been kept exactly like it was when she hung herself in this room. I don’t know if it’s superstitious to move anything, but apparently it is the one room that has not been disturbed in anyway.
Notice in this picture the way the walk way has a center area, then two areas on the sides of it and then the rest is all the same. This is consistent in every place we visited too. Apparently the gods walk down the middle, the Emperor walks down the left side and the servants and ministers walk on the right side. It is exactly the same where ever we went. We had quite a bit of fun pretending that we were the Emporer and then not and back and forth. Perhaps you had to be there to really get the humor in it, but it was fun. Everything is just too formal for us.
Tian’an men Square is the world’s largest public square. Below is a picture of part of it.
It is a significant place in fairly recent history for China’s government, but we couldn’t find any of that history on the internet or in the books we read. The government screens out this type of information on the internet from the people. If you can’t find the history of what happened then it didn’t happen right? My understanding is there was a big political uprising during the 80’s when the people (mostly students) wanted to protest the communist government. They gathered in the square for their protest for several months (there were even hunger strikes). The government got embarrassed and called in the military to end the protest. And probably 500-800 people were killed by the military on the final day of the protest. As a result today when we visited the square there was military every where. I think they are concerned about Tibet and the upcoming Olympics and potential protests. I plan to look up this history of this square when I get home. I think it was a turning point for the Chinese government.
Notice in this picture the way the walk way has a center area, then two areas on the sides of it and then the rest is all the same. This is consistent in every place we visited too. Apparently the gods walk down the middle, the Emperor walks down the left side and the servants and ministers walk on the right side. It is exactly the same where ever we went. We had quite a bit of fun pretending that we were the Emporer and then not and back and forth. Perhaps you had to be there to really get the humor in it, but it was fun. Everything is just too formal for us.
Tian’an men Square is the world’s largest public square. Below is a picture of part of it.It is a significant place in fairly recent history for China’s government, but we couldn’t find any of that history on the internet or in the books we read. The government screens out this type of information on the internet from the people. If you can’t find the history of what happened then it didn’t happen right? My understanding is there was a big political uprising during the 80’s when the people (mostly students) wanted to protest the communist government. They gathered in the square for their protest for several months (there were even hunger strikes). The government got embarrassed and called in the military to end the protest. And probably 500-800 people were killed by the military on the final day of the protest. As a result today when we visited the square there was military every where. I think they are concerned about Tibet and the upcoming Olympics and potential protests. I plan to look up this history of this square when I get home. I think it was a turning point for the Chinese government.
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