Saturday 8th November 2014

Tiananmen Square – The Forbidden City

Temple of Heaven – The Night Market

 

11.10pm – Wow what a fantastic day! I think I speak for us all when I say we are very tired but exhilarated. Our day started at 9am this morning and until now we had only been back to our rooms for half an hour for a quick freshen up. We have seen some amazing sights and enjoyed lots of laughs.

Traffic was sparser than usual in the centre of Beijing today and Li Biao advised us that this was due to the APEC Congress which was taking place in the capital during the next few days. All factories were closed a week ago and only a number of cars are permitted into the city centre each day. Cars with one particular number plate are permitted on even dates, the others on odd dates. These measures have been taken to reduce the pollution, and because of this we enjoyed a beautiful blue sky – a rare sight in Beijing!

Our first stop of the day was Tiananmen Square. After the security checks we were carried along in the throng of people pushing and shoving to cross the road and enter the square. The very first thing that I saw was an absolute huge model of a basket of flowers, ‘Aw, for me, Dave?’ I joked. Joking aside the display was rather naff looking; it was eleven meters in diameter and was placed in the square for the Chinese National Day.

The police all resembled Lego men with their white plastic looking helmets and small square patrol cars.
One of the largest squares in the world, Tiananmen is also home to Mao’s Mausoleum, the Great Hall of the People, (the equivalent of the Palace of Westminster), and the entrance to the Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City was home to Emperors for almost 500 years. As the name suggests mere mortals were not permitted into the Forbidden City, indeed it is said that no one could enter or leave the palatial site without the permission of the emperor. Only the emperor himself used one of the entrances except on his wedding day when for that occasion only, the empress was permitted to use it too. The area is huge, the entrances to many of the buildings are cordoned off by rope and we soon realised that we would have to join in pushing and shoving hard while smiling at the same time. It all seemed to be good-natured and clearly there was no other way to get a glimpse of these grand interiors. We are so pleased that we came at this time of year and not in summer when there are many more tourists.

I was surprised to be approached on two or three occasions and asked if I would have a photograph with someone. Our guide said this could be because some of the people are from the country and have not seen a foreigner before or more likely due to the colour of my hair that is considered lucky.

 

 

 

 

 

We enjoyed wandering through the huge area and learning a little about the architecture. Feng Shui was of course dominant throughout the Forbidden City. Two huge stone lions protected each entrance; the male with a ball underneath his paw and the female rests one of her paws on a cub.

When the moat around the complex was excavated, they used the earth to create a hill behind the city. In accordance with Feng Shui beliefs the hill would protect the palace from evil spirits in the north.
Some tourists were hiring costumes and having their photographs taken, little children posing with one of their parents in ancient traditional dress.
Nearing the end of our Forbidden City tour we entered the Imperial Garden, where the royal family would spend time reading and playing chess etc.

The garden was beautiful; it had many ancient trees, rock formations and beautiful pavilions. We entered The Pavilion of Ten Thousand Springs and its ornately decorated ceiling was beautiful. We all wished that we had more time to explore this amazing garden.

 

 

 

 

 

While walking to a local restaurant for lunch we came across a blind man who was playing an instrument while begging, his wife was guiding him through the traffic by a lead attached to his wrist. We wondered how much money they would make…

After eating our delicious lunch we were met by our driver and driven to the Temple of Heaven. On the way to the park the driver stopped and Li Biao informed us that we were going to visit a pearl factory, when we told him that we were not interested, he seemed a little put out and stated that it was in our schedule. We patiently and firmly explained what we had previously discussed and agreed, we were not interested in shopping at pearl factories, souvenir shops or the like. We were here to see China and it’s people not to shop!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Temple of Heaven Complex is situated in a huge park of the same name. It was Saturday afternoon and many people were in the park, we passed many different groups ballroom dancing, singing and enjoying many other activities.

The most famous building in the Temple Complex is the magnificent circular Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. Originally constructed in the 15th century it is made entirely with wood and without the use of any nails. The blue roof is said to symbolise heaven and as the name suggests it is here where the Emperors would pray for a good harvest.
We were disappointed to learn that, once again, entrance to the temple was prohibited. We had to join the pushing and shoving to see inside, as you can see from the photograph of the interior I don’t think we did bad. Many tourists were using selfie sticks to photograph and one had to be careful and dodge them as they were appearing from all directions.
Dave and I wandered around some of the other buildings. A Chinese man stood very close to me and I noticed that his companion was photographing us. I smiled and indicated that I didn’t mind, the man then ran to Dave and put his arm in his and posed for another picture, I joined them both. He shook our hands and bowed, beaming at us; clearly we had made his day. Apparently the Chinese often refer to Europeans as ‘big noses’ and when you look at their noses I can understand why.

We went into another building and caught Pete and Anne photographing a photograph, they were obviously going to claim the picture as one of their own. That’s cheating you two!

The four of us spent some more time in the park enjoying the incredible talents of the singing groups and the different dancing troupes before heading to the aptly named Long Corridor. Beneath the colourfully painted wooden roof of the open corridor, many people were either playing games or watching a game. One of the most popular on this particular Saturday afternoon appeared to be Chinese chess. This is not the chess that most of us westerners are accustomed to but is played with round discs with Chinese characters on. A lot of these chess sets were handmade.

 

Again we wanted to stay longer but time would not allow. Li Biao led us into a building near to the exit of the park; he told us that we could watch a traditional tea ceremony. It wasn’t long before we realised that it was just a way of trying to sell tea and other products that they had. The tea was very expensive too! We noted some of the small canisters cost the equivalent of £70. We made our excuses and left as soon as possible, we would have much rather spent another 20 minutes watching the Chinese play games. We all agreed that we must return to the park.

Our guide and driver returned us to our hotel and after a quick freshen up, the four of us met up again and walked to the bustling Wangfujing Street. The street is a popular shopping area, however we were there to visit the famous night market situated just off the main street. The stalls lined one street and sold only takeaway foodstuffs. Some traditional snacks that you would perhaps expect to find were on display. These included vegetable pancake rolls, fried potatoes, fried prawns, freshly cooked dumplings with many different fillings etc.

These dishes were next to the more exotic bites, which included scorpions, snakes, ducks, frogs, starfish, shark and octopus all of which were on skewers cooked and ready to eat. I confess that our western tastes did not tempt us to order anything extraordinary. Anne & Pete purchased some dumplings and prawns and Dave and I snacked on some vegetable rolls. Although not adventurous ourselves, we did enjoy watching a group of twenty something’s daring each other to have a bite of the small cooked snake they had chosen.

After leaving the market we soon found the huge three-storied Foreign Bookshop that I had been told about. I purchased the acupressure charts, which I had been hoping to find.
There were many famous name shops along this capital city’s main shopping street. Such names as Prada and Van Cleef & Arpels were among many illuminated stores.

We recalled that when looking at the map earlier we had noticed that the night market wasn’t too far away from Tiananmen Square, we decided it would be interesting to see it in the evening, as it would probably be illuminated so we headed in that direction.

Along the way we noticed an ornate archway with lots of red hanging lanterns beyond it, we went through the archway and we were in another market. This market sold trinkets and souvenirs but there were also many weird and wonderful food stalls. This time to our dismay we saw seahorses on skewers next to the still moving deep fried grasshoppers, scorpions and various insects.

We wandered through the many lanes of stalls all the while heading (hopefully) in the direction of Tiananamen Square. We managed to find it, and the gate to the Forbidden City and the fountains were lit up so we stopped to take some photographs.

It was now 8.40pm and we decided to catch a metro back to our hotel. We had to walk through a security checkpoint at the station and we all bleeped many times. The young female security guards and ourselves fell about laughing, as I wasn’t at all sure if she was indicating to me that I could continue or that I must go through the security check again and I was doing a jig backwards and forwards not knowing what to do. We managed to purchase the tickets and then Pete couldn’t get through the gate with his ticket onto to the platform so that caused more laughs. Eventually a member of staff came and checked our tickets and let Pete through with her pass.

The Beijing metro is the cheapest public transport in the world; the journey cost just 2 Yuan, (20pence). A single journey on London’s underground today would cost £4.80

We enjoyed a delicious meal in the hotel’s cosy bar while watching and listening to a young lady playing a traditional Chinese horizontal harp. We declined the offer of a second tea ceremony of the day.

We are going to the Great Wall of China tomorrow. Our guide has informed us that we can also visit The Summer Palace in the afternoon. However we have told him that we prefer to spend the whole time at the wall. Pete has looked into which is the best direction to walk at the section of the wall we will be visiting and we hope to walk along the wall for 3 kilometers to the furthest renovated tower and then back.

Previous          Next