This morning, we arranged to meet at 9am in Tiananmen
Square to start the days sightseeing, two words explain this… Rookie error!
Thing’s weren't perfect when we arrived and found out
that you need to go through security to cross the road onto the square!!! This
took 20 mins alone, then once on the square, it was impossible to find anyone
there, we were all walking around and found each other at 0930, so could start
the day!
Mao’s Mausoleum
First stop was to see the big man himself, Chairman
Mao. There are not many foreigners that visit the mausoleum, but it was an opportunity
to see him, as I saw Ho Chi Ming laying in state last year too. We knew it
would be about 90mins, for 26 seconds in the room, but decided that we wanted
to do it, so went.
Being British, it is traditional for us to queue and
wait our turn, I quickly learnt that this does not apply in China, when
everyone was pushing past, quickly, I learnt the game and was pushing and
shoving to get it, it became fun actually picking people and seeing how far in
front we can push ahead of them.
When we got through the security checkpoint, we noticed
that many people were carrying flowers, then we saw the stall selling these for
3¥ each, I did laugh to myself thinking, how many of these are picked up at the
end of the day and resold.
Finally after an hour, the queue was quicker than we
thought, we were walking up the red carpet into the lobby of the Mausoleum.
When entering there was a huge statue of Chairman Mao
sat in his chair looking over the entrance, with hundreds of bushes around him.
There was a large stand in front of his statue, jam packed full of the flowers
that the locals had bought to mourn him. They were walking in; bowing 3 times
to the statue then laid the flowers on the stand. I watched as I walked around
into the next room.
The next room we entered, there was a dark room, with 2
soldiers standing guard to the coffin, and a glass coffin with Chairman Mao in.
The coffin has the communist hammer and sickle on it,
and covering his body was the red flag of the communist party, of Mao all you
could see is his head. It did look very “over exposed” but to be fair he died
in 1976 and his body has been on show since then.
The room was surreal and, as the situation when I saw
Ming in Hanoi, it reminded you of the political situation of the country im in.
I walked out glad to have seen in, but slightly disappointed
when I walked outside and there was a tacky tourist stand in the military grounds.
I did think, should I get a Mao dinner set and bring it out when I have friends
over!!
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| Mausoleum |
Tiananmen Square
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| Someones happy to see me! |
The Forbidden City
The Forbidden City was the residence for the emperor (total of14 emperors lived there), the empress, his concubines and his personal staff. Building started in 1406 and finished in 1420. The palace was extended over the years and there are not 980 buildings within the palace!!! It was called the Forbidden City as only the people about and senior military officials were allowed in the grounds, everyone else was forbidden to enter.
The entry was quite a surprise, only 60¥ (£6). Once we pushed though the queues, cleaned the next set of security, we were inside. We walked through the gate the and the view was breath-taking seeing the first great palace in the foreground.
We walked up to the first building and it was the
emperors thrown room, as you could imagine it wasn’t from Ikea, the room was
quite empty other than his seat.
We walked through and saw and heard many crazy new things, like every door has a log of wood in front of it, to stop the zombies from entering at night. The gold plated water tubs were scratched off by the British and French armies, until the found out the tubs were plated and not pure gold.
My funniest was the 4 star rated toilets the palace has... even the emperor didn’t get a 5 star loo here!
We finally walked through the rear gardens and left at the back gate.
Lunch Time
To
get to lunch, we went on a new experience, taking the local bus. Well I didn’t know
you could fit this many people on a bus, but at only 2¥ a ticket, you can see
why! I did get a sneaky pic though!!
Once we got to the lunch place, we went for traditional Chinese Hot Pot. This is a pot of water with a charcoal heater in the centre keeping the temperature very high. Now we needed to decide what to have, easy lets take a look at the menu!
We’ll if any of you can read that, well my cousin knew a few, anyone else well done! We went for Beef, Lamb, Fish, Shrimps, Veg, Rice Noodles and our favourite rolled over donkey (it wasn’t an actual donkey but the name of the desert!).
The Summer Palace
After lunch, we made our way to the summer palace. As it gets hot in Beijing the Emperor had a second palace where he could live in the summer, buy the lake making things cooler, and believe me, it was much cooler and a much nicer feeling!
We entered at a whopping 30¥ and the first building, of course is the summer throne room. Surrounding the room one each side was a statue of the Phoenix and Dragon, showing the strength of the emperor.
I didn't get much here, as I was too busy walking around in pure amazement of the place, it was beautiful. It also included a walkway, known as the long corridor. It was 728mtrs long with over 14,000 paintings in there, all amazing. Unfortunately in the cultural revolution, a worker put a temporary cover a lot of the paintings, thinking the revolution would only be a week long, to protect these from being damaged by the communists. Unfortunately this lasted 10 years, and everything that was covered ended up eating through the paint, destroying the paintings, which was ironic as the reason it was applied was to protect these. Here are some examples though.
We got to the end and saw many more amazing things, like the temple on top of the hill.
It was closing time, so instead of walking back we took a boat to the docks near the metro station, as a good little adventure, this was perfect as it was the start of sunset and the views were spectacular.
To top this off, where we were dropped off, we are at a little village area on the side of the water, and we were the only people there, this was the perfect opportunity for some pictures.
After this, I said goodbye to Matt and Reagan who went
the the Theatre in the evening and will leave Beijing tomorrow. We swapped
emailed to send each other our pictures. They were a great pair to meet and
explore with.
Olympic Stadium
I went back to my room for a few hours and waited until
it was dark and took a walk to the Olympic Park to see the Birds Nest and the
Water Cube.
The area was kept in good condition and looked very
clean, I mentioned this as I went to the Athens Olympic Stadium in 2010 and it
was a mess, but the Chinese has kept the Olympic park well and opens it for
people to walk around until 10pm.
I was amazing to walk around, but of course there were
people still trying to sell Olympics stuff, I don’t know if they know it ended
7 years ago!
Here’s some of my snaps!
Tomorrows a bit of a free day, so watch this space!
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