Day 8 – The Forbidden City

Jeanne and I with Chairman Mao

We had a very nice surprise as Yo Yo was our tour guide again today for our tour of Beijing city. This is our third day with her so she knows us well. Her English is good and she is very competent in handling problems that come up and today the problem was crowds. All the major sights are open today and everyone who has been waiting for that is now out and about. There were massive crowds in Tiananmen Square where we started and it would have been impossible to even walk around there but we were able to see everything but from a distance so it was fine.

The Emperor's Palace

We walked through Tiananmen Tower which is instantly recognizable with its large picture of Mao that looks out at Tiananmen Square and his own mausoleum at the far end. You pass through the tower on you way to enter the Forbidden City where the Ming and Chiang dynasty emperors lived for over 5xx years. The area is called “forbidden” because there are parts where only the emperor was allowed and that included the empress and his children. To reach the innermost part of the palace (for lack of a better word), you have to go through majestic outer buildings. These buildings were surrounded with rooms where people waiting to see the emperor could stay. In all, there are 8000 rooms in the palace. To simplify the description of the inner part, the two main buildings were the Temple of Heavenly Paradise (Emperor) and the Temple of Earthly Paradise (Empress). Behind this is a garden area where the emperor’s 3000 concubines lived. From what we were told, it took one million people 24 years to construct this complex.

Temple of the Sun

We had an obligatory stop at a Chinese herbal medicine demonstration where they try to sell you medicinal herbs that was followed by lunch at a local restaurant. The food was on average not up to the previous tour lunches but there were a couple of dishes we really liked, Caramelized Eggplant and an orange flavored stir fry of carrots, pork and peppers. After lunch we visited to the Temple of the Sun. “Sun” is appropriate word today because it is nearly 90 degrees today and there are people everywhere but Yo Yo steers us through the crowds. The temple is a beautiful round building symbolizing heaven which the Chinese believed was round while the grounds were in a square shape which symbolized the earth. Only the Emperor prayed here and it was for the people to have a good harvest.

Lake at the Summer Palace (in the background)

We had another obligatory stop at a pearl demonstration and we then on to our final stop at the Summer Palace. This palace was built for the Empress Dowager Cixi (pronounced "see-she"). She was never really an Empress but through clever manipulation she served as regent and effectively controlled the Chinese government in the late Qing dynasty for 47 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. She had the palace built and to get to the palace she had a special canal constructed to carry her there from the Forbidden City. She even had the lake enlarged and shaped like a turtle to symbolize longevity. The hill behind the Summer Place was created from the earth removed from the lake. Today the palace is a Buddhist Temple but you can walk around the lake or enjoy a boat ride. Cixi obviously wielded enormous power and had almost one million people working on her special projects.

Because of all the crowds today the tour took about an hour and a half longer than normal and we were tired when we got back to our room so we just ate in the Executive Lounge.