Travel-and-Leisure
Beijing, Tian'anmen Sq. & Forbidden City
Beijing is one of the craziest cities I have been to. There are people just everywhere. They are walking, cycling, in cars and one thing I will never forget?they are always spitting! Even the frail, old women walking along the street hurl a big gob in the back of their throat and lob it anywhere they like, even indoors! It?s so rancid that it truly made me take a great distaste to the people. Dirty disciples! I empathise a little in the fact that there a millions of cars and therefore the pollution is rife and it can be hard to breathe but there is no excuse for the constant ejection of salvia from their filthy mouths. It?s unnecessary and more than anything else it?s just manners!
But I wasn?t here to see the phlegm of the Chinese I was there to see their architecture, landscape and their food, so on with the show. The first day we headed to Tian?anmen Square, and I swear it?s the size of a small county. It?s just colossal. I couldn?t get my camera to fit in the whole area no matter how far I stood back. The square was brimming with tour groups. They all manage to have these red or yellow plain baseball caps and a tour guide flying around like a headless chicken waving a stick in the air. The forty hectare area is protected by Chinese guards - and there are an awful lot of these guards, and the reason why there are so many, I concluded, is because it?s such a mammoth country that the people have to work doing something, even if that means standing in a huge yard! It is very impressive though, just the sheer size of it.
After Tian?anmen we followed a Japanese tour group with bright yellow caps to The Forbidden City (it?s easier to cross the 6 lane roads in a big group). Another titanic piece of building from the Chinese. In this article I?m trying to mix up the word ?big? because everything in China is huge, and the Forbidden City is no exception. There are 800 buildings and 9000 rooms. That?s BIG! It took us two and a half hours to walk through the Forbidden City (so called by the way because the common folk of the day weren?t allowed in it). The amount of temples was staggering and mind-blowing. It?s hard to comprehend, even when you?re there, that this place is manmade, it seems like too big a feat, that it must be natural! We did hire commentary tapes (very disappointed when we found out it wasn?t Rodger Moore guiding us, but a Chinese woman with poor pronunciation skills) and though it wasn?t that memorable I do recall her saying that an Emperor?s wife?s dinner used to be so gigantic that it could have fed thousands of the starving peasants on the outside of the city - each night! Hard to comprehend.
China was getting interesting, and a visit to Mao in his freezer was just what we needed to continue this historical tour of Beijing, but we kept missing him because they close the freezer door every Monday morning, so we?d have to forget about Mao. So back to the hostel for some beers!
Laura Foy
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