posted by:

Beijing: It is good to be the emperor

Beijing Travel Blog › entry 3 of 18 › view all entries

David & I traveled to China in May 2007: We spent the first 7 days with a Friendly Planet Tour & last 2 weeks on our own. This is quick telling of our travels. We loved the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Ming Tombs, jade stores, tea farms, Beijing, Harley Davidson (Beijing), Guilin, Li River, Yangshou, Suzhou, Shanghai, Xi'an, Terra Cotta Soldiers...the food, street scenes,tourist traps, scenery, museums, gardens & most of all the people!China is a Hoot! We LOVED it: anyone can do it on their own!

View All Photos

RSS Feed

Report spam

World › Asia › China › Beijing

« Previous Entry: Beijing: so much… Next Entry: beijing, houtons, templ… »

Beijing: It is good to be the emperor

May 3, 2007

Lion head holding the handles of the water caldron. this was near the doors: these were always kept full for fire suppression.....

MAY 3, 2007 There is an incredible amount of building going on in Beijing. they are mowing down huge blocks and blocks of land for the Olympics. A lot of historic buildings and homes are being sacrificed... apparently the people who lived there were paid well for the homes and when the Olympics are over they will get a discounted price for the apartments that are being built for the athletes, news media & support staff..... the stadium for the Olympics is called the bird nest and look just like one.... a tangled mess of huge tubes. it seems like China is not very impressed with their very wonderful historical buildings . ... they were also looted and compromised during the cultural revolution.

Today we had a tour of a silk carpet factory.

this is so clever using water as part of the decoration..

.. (part of organized tours is the forced visits to factories and shopping areas.... very annoying to waste the hours looking at things you are not interested in....) Anyway...back to the silk carpet place.... the prices were absolutely scary... what a waste of time. There were probably two sales persons per tourist... If you paused to look at something they rushed over as though you were fumbling for your credit card. It was too bad they were so enthused about helping us as it took the wind out of our sails (and their sales) being pushed and hurried to "make" a decision. And at those prices!! there was no temptation for me..... yikes. AND to add insult to injury: no pictures were allowed...that was annoying.... like i was going to rush home and set down at my loom and recreate what we saw.

peony: carved: on wall as decoration

... In the back they had pictures that were embroidered .... Stunning to see... they looked painted but were millions of threads .... hmmmm Wish I had a photograph to illustrate ....

We went to Tienanmen square and looked around. It is made for 1/2 million people to congregate. It was very large and many families were there enjoying the history of the place. The Mao tomb was closed . I was bummed as I had really wanted to go in: it will be open again for the Olympics. We took pictures and tried to take it all in.   All of the public places in China are very very large due to the number of population utilizing them.
Then we went to the forbidden city.    wow. I will bet I took 100 pictures.

close up of the lion: His eyes appear to be amber....they shined in the sun...

It was HUGE. We saw the inner part and it was miles of walking. part of it is in scaffolding. but most was already redone and it was beautiful. The painted beams are unbelievable. So perfect. The buildings are all so far apart. It appeared there were 3 different areas. Each was deeper into the city and was more private for the emperor. We looked into the bedrooms and we were shocked at how tiny they were. We had to move right along with our guide. I hate that.... but on the other hand, left to my own devices I would never get past the first gate.

This is part of the imperial palaces near imperial city: you go from the t-square area under the underpass to the imperial /forbidden city. .... after you say no a million times to the vendors....

The gates have the imperial number 9: nine knobs on the doors going across and 9 up and down.... very cool.

It was the imperial palace during the Ming and Qing dynasty. (it should be noted that the Chinese do not say forbidden city: they say imperial palace or palace museum) It has over 800 buildings and more than 8000 rooms. I think we covered just a fraction of them. I want to add that I was in awe of how huge it all was.... I looked at pictures before but it was so immense..... and so beautiful in detail when you got into the rooms.