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| Pretty cool... 2 world famous landmarks covered in one photo |
Alrighty... So, we've all heard of the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square most of our lives, but I for one never thought I would actually go there. Well, life is full of surprises and the above picture is me, standing in Tiananmen Square with the Forbidden City directly behind me.
Tiananmen Square is actually fairly boring. There is the crypt of Mao Ze Dong, a few statues honoring fallen soldiers and a couple of museums that border it. Other than that, there is nothing very special about it, other than its history of course.
The following are some pictures of Tiananmen, but again they are nothing special:
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| Mao Ze Dong's crypt |
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| A statue honoring soldiers that died during the Chinese Civil War |
After staying about 15 minutes in Tiananmen, we moved into the Forbidden City, which was far cooler.
One of the first things that caught my eye upon entering the Forbidden City was this...
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| An astroturf basketball court.... wtf? |
Yes... That is a basketball court.... made of astroturf.... in the Forbidden City. China is strange sometimes. Walking through the Forbidden City was very cool. My friend is very educated on the history and customs of ancient China so was about to give me a lot of cool details such as this one... The lighter grey area upon which I am standing in the following picture was raised a little bit above the rest of the ground. Only the emperor could walk on this raised portion, it was forbidden for anyone else too.
The emperor also had hundreds of wives. The wives sole job was to sleep with the emperor, the rest of the time they spent their lives fighting with eachother for the emperors favor like some sort of bad reality show. Interestingly enough, about 90% of Chinese television shows center around the quarrels between emperors wives. (Ok, maybe not 90% but a ton... There seem to be 4 types of shows here, war shows, news shows, reality shows and shows about the different dynasties, mostly focusing on the wives)
In the Forbidden City I was lucky enough to get to take a picture with these two cute girls dressed as the emperors wives would have dressed back in the day...
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| Notice the yellow roofs behind us... The color of the roofs symbolized your rank in society. This color is the equivalent of royal blue in the west. |
My friend said that they told her in Chinese that they felt honored that I had asked for, and taken a picture with them... Very strange, they were the ones doing me a favor!
Here are a couple more pictures from the City, with captions...
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| The animals each symbolize something different... There are 11 animals, only the emperor could have 11 animals on top of his house.... The more animals you had, the more prominent you were. |
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| The Chinese equivalent of a Totem pole |
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| I just thought this looked cool |
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| A Moat! |
After the Forbidden City, we went to a place called Shan Jing. It means Scenery Mountain. From the top of Jing Shan, you can see all of the Forbidden City and Beijing laid out below you.
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| The whole of the Forbidden City |
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| Beijing |
Leaving there, we went to the Winter Palace and got a boat, paddled around, left there and ended up at a place called Hou Hai. Here are the pictures.
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| We need this in America! An inflatable bumper boat pool for little kids, so awesome. |
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| Hou Hai lake, on a beautiful day like today is gorgeous |
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| At the winter palace, these people wanted a picture with me |
And finally... for those of you that have stuck around, I have a special treat for you... I embarrassed myself because I knew my mom would think it was the funniest thing ever... So this is for you mom, I love you...
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