Beijing Sites

Last weekend, Gary and I took the bullet train from Tianjin to Beijing. It's just under 100 miles away, but the train got us there in only 30 minutes. There's so much to see in Beijing, so we decided to just stick to one area this time and see the major tourist attractions.

First up, the Forbidden City. The "City" is a huge expanse of various royal buildings where the emperor and empress would have stayed... some structures were for housing, some for political meetings, some for resting and entertainment. And while the buildings are beautiful and the intricate decorations are impressive, the actual sites to see are underwhelming. What we actually toured was just a series of large open plazas, surrounded by the newly-renovated ancient buildings, none of which we could actually enter.

Highlights included the huge red doors with golden knobs you are meant to rub for good luck, and finding out that even though the palace walls stretch only half a mile from North to South, the emperor had a "resting" room in the middle. The lazy old man...

So after a few hours of making our way around the palace grounds, we headed to Tiananmen Square. Let me start by saying any and all references to Tiananmen Square's moment in history are completely blocked from the Chinese internet. Most Chinese people know it as nothing other the location of several gigantic political buildings and museums. There are security cameras and guards everywhere, and you get the overwhelming sense that you shouldn't talk about anything too scandalous while you're nearby.

So, we just quickly saw some of the enormous shrines to Chairman Mao Zedong and moved on. Everything we would have seen, heard, or read would have been carefully constructed anyway.