So it looks like our Beijing Day 1 Post is missing in action - we'll try to figure out what happened. Our hotel doesn't have free internet, so we're not doing any pictures due to long upload times.
Today, like last night, started off cool and sprinkling. Fortunately, by the time we arrived at the Forbidden City, the rain had stopped. The Forbidden City is a massive (nearly 1km by 1km) fortified area where the emperors lived and held political functions. It was built in the 1400’s when the capital of China was moved to Beijing. We started at the north gate and went to the south gate. The entire city was surrounded by a 30-foot high wall and an equally massive moat. There were several gardens in the city for the emperor and his wife. It’s hard to put words on how impressive the city was – many of the buildings were recently restored for the Beijing Olympics, so the details jumped out. One interesting fact our tour-guide shared was that each building was rated in importance (in case a fire broke out). The rating was the number of animal shapes on the corner of the roof. The most important buildings (like the emperor’s sleeping quarters) had nine animals. Speaking of nine’s, all of the doors had nine rows of nine ‘knobs’ on them. This was to portray power, as the number nine is seen as a powerful number in Chinese lore.
Our tour ended at the south gate, which opens into Tiananmen Square. The south gate is very important to the Chinese People, as Chairman Mao gave the speech which marked the start of the People’s Republic of China on the second level of the gate. To commemorate his speech, a new painting is created every year and is placed on the wall overlooking Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square is surrounded by Government buildings and can hold nearly 1 million people.
After a Chinese lunch, we visited the Temple of Heaven. This was where the Emperor would go to pray and make offerings to the God of Heaven (for a good harvest). One of the interesting social aspects of the Temple is that Senior Citizens are welcome to come and ‘hang out’ in the garden areas. We saw thousands of elderly people playing cards, badminton and hacky-sack, as well as singing, dancing, and playing music.
For dinner, Amie and I decided to ‘retry’ our Anniversary dinner. We had a traditional Peking Duck Dinner. It was delicious! This Beijing specialty is prepared by rubbing the duck with a blend of salt, pepper, and spices before slowly roasting it to a golden-brown color. The chef came to our table with a whole duck, holding it by its tail to slice it into bite size pieces. The duck is then wrapped in a thin rice paper tortilla with sliced cucumbers, thin onion strips, and a special sauce. In total, our meal had seven (or so, we kinda lost count) courses.
After dinner we took a taxi to the silk market (Beijing’s equivalent of Shanghai’s fake market), where we were bombarded with offers for t-shirts, fans, chopsticks, scarves, suits, jackets, jewelry, jeans, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. Don’t worry, you always get special-friend price!
Tomorrow we’re off to see the Great Wall.
Once again, it’s hard to describe what we saw without using pictures, so make sure to ask us when you see us again!
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