THE FORBIDDEN CITY

The entrance to The Frbidden City is just acorss the large roadway that surrowds Tian'anmen Square. Chairman Mao's portrait sits atop the enormous gate to this huge place. The interesting thing about this site is how immense it is. I don't know if any of my photos will express just how huge this place is. And the courtyards that we stepped into, accept for the main one, all looked the same. The buildings were all the same and though there were a few walls decorated with tile work, most of the structures were painted red, representing royalty and the tiles atop the buildings were gold, a representation of the heavesn.

The Emporer lived here with his concubines, servents. The grounds were sacred and no one else was allowed into the city and there were only certain locations where the concubines were allowed to visit within the city.

This place was so huge and confussing with each courtyard that we stepped into looking just like the one that we had left. When I looked into the rooms I saw that there were many luxurious gold and red pieces of furnature and the details of a royal life were definitely evident, but the structures themselves were not visually stimulating, at least not for me. I got the biggness and the flavor of what this place had been about, but I walked around and looked at the courtyards thinking how everything looked the same.

The hot sun reflected back off the brick walkways making the day feel even hotter than it actually was. And that's another thing, nothing grows in the courtyards. When the Emperor had the Forbidden City built he ordered that the courtyards contain a floor that was 50 bricks deep. He wanted to make sure that no one would be able to tunnel into the city.

At another time I'll blog a few of the photos that I took from the doorways looking into some of the buildings. As of this morning I am way behind on what we have seen so far, and by how things seem to be going, I will probably jump over a few things and move right into what we are doing in the 'now' and then catch these other things up once we get back to NY.

Today we see the Pandas, have lunch, visit the Summer Palace and then in the afternoon fly off to Xi'an where the Terracotta Warriors and Horses are located.