| We woke early to wave off those in
the party who had decided to go home! We were especially keen to say farewell to
Steve, a fellow Welshman, we had met on the trip. |
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| It was sad to see
everyone going, but also exciting to think about the sights we were planning to see.
We left the hotel, by taxi, for Tiananmen Sqaure and the Forbidden City. The smaller
the taxi you hire the cheaper the price. The only problem with this is that the
drivers are protected by a cage in the front and they are not prepared to be
cramped. As a result there is very little room to move once you are in and trying to
open a map to direct the driver was almost impossible. We arrived at the Forbidden
City just before 9am to find the entrance very busy with well established queues at the
ticket offices. |
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We entered the
City through the Duanmen Gate where we were first able to marvel at the scale of the
buildings etc. In front of us were the famous Golden Water Bridges. |
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The Forbidden City stands in the
centre of Beijing. It is protected by high walls and a moat on all four sides and consists
of dozens of halls and courtyards. The emperors of two dynasties, the Ming and the Ching,
lived here with their families and hundreds of court ladies and palace servants. From
their throne in the Forbidden City they governed the country by holding court sessions
with their ministers, issuing imperial edicts and initiating military expeditions.
In Chinese the Forbidden City is called Purple Forbidden City. "Purple" doesn't
refer to the colour of the buildings or walls, but has a mythological origin. It is said
that the Emperor of Heaven has his palaces in the region of the North Star, of which
purple is the symbolic colour. The home of the temporal emperor, therefore, is supposed to
have the same colour. The Purple Forbidden City was inaccessible to the common people.
Even the highest civil and military officers could not enter it without good reason.
The Forbidden City was completed in 1420 during the Ming Dynasty. It was the home
of 24 emperors of the Ming and Ching dynasties. Naturally it was the scene of many
important events affecting the course of Chinese history, including political struggles
and palace coups, some of them extremely tragic.
After the republican revolution of 1911, the last emperor of the Ching Dynasty,
then still a child, abdicated the next year. But he and his family and their entire
entourage were allowed to stay in the palaces. They were finally expelled by republican
troops in 1924. The Forbidden City was renamed as the Palace Museum and opened to the
general public.
The Forbidden City occupies a total space of more than 720,000 square metres. The surrounding palace walls are 10 metres high and have a total length of 3,400 metres,
and are protected by a 52-meter-wide moat.
Impressed with that? I must admit to not writing it myself and credit has to
go to the author, whose details I have forgotten. |
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| The site is full of ornate
sculptures and statues. There are many lions and turtles often arranged in
pairs. Some areas are being renovated and we again saw the use of wooden
scaffolding. Men and women were busy replastering and painting pillars in the
vivid red used throughout the Forbidden City. Some of the scultures are in need of
renovation as seen by the lion below. There seems to be little effort to preserve
the existing buildings, with people allowed to touch them and rub past them as they queue
to see into some of them. |
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| Overall the buildings and
ststues etc. were spectacular and we wished we had more time to spend there.
Unfortunately we had to return to our hotel to collect our luggage and two colleagues,
Clare and Chris, to travel to Xi'an. |
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| We arrived at Beijing West Railway
Station at 2.15pm in plenty of time for our 3.20pm departure. The waiting room at
the station was full and quite smelly! The train left on time and we found our way
to our carriage. I forgot to tell you earlier that we had booked hard sleeper
accomodation on the train. We were hoping to have booked soft sleeper but thety were
already fully booked before we bought our tickets. We were pleasently surprised at
the relative comfort, albeit cramped conditions, of the carriage. |
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| The train journey was not as
scenic as we expected and we spent many hour traveling through flat, cultivated
land. The mountains we expected to travel through didn't materialise and night soon
arrived. We decided to go to bed at about 9pm and slept with our bags, having been
warned about thefts etc. It was a very long journey, fifteen hours on a train with
little or no facilities is very testing. Some visited the toilets at the end of the
carriage and following the reports of hygiene, or lack of it from them, it was to be a
long haul! |
