The hotel were lovely and let us check in at 7.00am, we were very glad of a short time to sort the bags and get showered before we left for the forbidden city. The room might have had a view of it but they weren’t joking and behind our curtain was a wall! As Vincent pointed out a wall was in fact preferable as the Chinese are allergic to central heating, although we did have an AC unit it was all in Chinese and I opted for not fiddling in case I made it worse.
We stepped outside in our Suzhou gear only to find that Beijing was having a warm spell. OK it wasn’t very warm by my standards but the sun was shining and the wind wasn’t too blustery so I didn’t even need my gloves and scarf, the long johns were still my constant companion though. They will stay on until Bangkok. We realised that we were right at the back entrance of the Forbidden City so went along our road, dotted with old men hanging out bird cages on the trees at the side of the road. Why? Was there also no wildlife in Beijing but they wanted to hear the birds? Was it an outdoor pet shop only for budgies? Were they breakfast.....mmmm? I never dared ask and hope they were simply to make the walk along the road pleasant and harmonious.
Opposite the entrance, or rather exit, of the Forbidden City was another sight. It looked like several pagodas on hill, three at the top and one at the bottom. As we peered in we saw people doing ‘Gong Fu’ (We call kung fu) with swords and knives and others doing ‘Tai Ji’ (we call Tai Chi). It was a great thing to watch and very ‘Chinese’.
We went in to the Forbidden City by the back door and to me it seemed like we did it the right way round. Not only did we get to the smaller gardens before the bulk of the other tourists, but it unfolded to us in a way where every next place was bigger and more majestic. I got the audio guide, which I was glad of, not because I have suddenly become a history buff but because it told interesting stories and to be honest the bigger areas although impressive were very much the same as each other.
We walked through the gardens looking at the huge trees and the Cherry blossoms, which were in full flower, popping into pagodas and listening to the stories of the water god who was worshiped in the final building. The whole place was geared up to crop planting and one of the main jobs of the emperor was to take the first seed of the year, in spring, and bless it in the various places, including the temple of heaven which we will visit later, then to go out himself to the fields on a rare trip out of the city and plant the first seed.
As we walked through each area became bigger and more impressive. The court yards were huge and very majestic – but empty. Each of the buildings was in a similar style although you could see some of them had been restored and others left. They all had roofs that were yellowy gold in colour and glinted in the sunlight, then the drain system was all green, possibly jade? The huge spaces inside the buildings were set up with the various thrones of the emperor and some of the ornaments and vases. On had huge calligraphy pictures hanging that apparently reminded the emperor to be wise and just. Behind one of the calligraphy pictures the emperor put the name of his successor so there wasn’t fighting between his children as to who was emperor next, although I’m not sure how well that worked.
The last courtyard must have been the size of a football pitch, by the time we reached it we had been walking for nearly three hours and everyone else had gotten up so it was teeming with hoards of Chinese tourists. It gave you more of an idea how it would have looked in the old days and made me realise why they hadn’t made more of the spaces – we thought it would have been better if there were people dressed in appropriate clothes for the era and doing sketches or something as the large spaces were empty of relics etc. We got to the entrance way where there was a river crossed by three bridges and a huge wall with 5 tunnels. My audio guide told me the emperor only used the central ones which were paved in marble so we fought our way through the hoards to take the route of the top dog.
By now it was lunch time so we began the search for something we could eat. The first stop was all random looking meat products but a lady with a very shrill voice was screaming to everyone about her little room and she was dressed as a cook. Sure enough she was encouraging people to visit her restaurant, a small room that looked like a truck stop. One of the things on the menu was egg and tomato noodles so we grabbed a bowl and it was pretty good. We also decided to try the drink Kelly was always having with yoghurt and vitamins, it was odd but not unpleasant.
Leaving the city and handing back the walkman we saw a wedding party with their photographers taking pictures by the walls so we took a couple of shots of her, every time she hitched up her dress to get into a new position you could see she was wearing a pair of huge black boots under it! Not very dainty. We went through several more tunnels in walls trying to get out and finally emerged in Tianamen square. You can’t go into the square, just round the edge, so we looked at the huge buildings and the hundreds of red flags. Vincent realised that most of the places we have been to had this set up for their capital city. India and America both have a huge square with government buildings around it and a place for their president/prime minister/etc it seems odd that 10 Downing Street is a tiny little cobbled road and the Prime minister of England lives in a modestly sized house.
After all the walking I decided I needed a sit down and we opted to go back to the hotel as it wasn’t too far away. We walked down a little street and met a very nice Chinese student who told us where to get the taxi from and asked us about England. He then tried to get us to go to his art college’s exhibition but luckily at that moment a taxi came along, I don’t think I could have walked another step.
The plan was to have a sit down then go out again, but we both fell asleep and didn’t wake up until it was time for dinner. We looked in the book and picked a vegetarian restaurant for dinner – we wanted hassle free eating for a change. A short way along the walk we met some more friendly Chinese students who wanted to give us some tips. They didn’t really tell us anything new but it was nice to stop and chat to people and it made Beijing feel a little friendlier. We decided to stick to our plan even though they told us it was the expensive part of town and walked a bit more. We found the right road using only Vincent’s ‘spidey sense’ I have been amazed at how well he can look at a map then find places, I can’t even do it if I have the map in front of me! AS we approached the place we thought it might be another student started chatting to us. She was obviously another art student and wanted us to go to her exhibition as well, but we declined and showed her the pin ying name of the restaurant. She told us we were already there, looking up we saw a foot massage place, and she told us that for the Olympics they decided to change the restaurant into a foot massage shop! It did have a sign on it saying ‘Foot massage soup’ but we decided that probably wouldn’t taste very nice  (probably a miss spelling of soap too?)
We ended up grabbing a taxi and going to the bar street thinking there must be food with the drinks. As we walked along a rep for each of the places tried to entice us in and we walked the whole length before deciding on a little bar that had a small vegetarian section on the menu. It turned out they were more bar snacks than food but we ordered spring rolls, tortillas and a random thing in Chinese that turned out to be a rice based dish with veg and sauce. We also had one drink each and settled back to watch the Chinese band play. The band was pretty awful and although the girl could sing she obviously couldn’t actually speak English so she just ran all the sounds she had copied together. The bloke playing the keyboard sang OK, but Chinese music isn’t exactly my thing. After a while the band was done and two dancing girls went on stage. One was a modern dancer and just flung herself around and the other was a belly dancer, she wasn’t Chinese but we couldn’t work out where she was from under the layers of makeup. They were OK but we decided to make a move to another bar and asked for the bill – it was 350 yuen (35 quid!!) It turned out the nuts he had put on the table were a fiver and my gin and tonic was twelve quid. Vincent argued that we didn’t touch the nuts so he gave us 50 yuen off but even that left a staggering price. We quickly changed plans and headed back to the hotel to watch a movie, we had free internet and had been downloading Curse of the Golden Flower – Vincent thinks it may have been shot inside the forbidden city so we can say ‘been there’ a lot. (He was right! - N)