Beijing, China - Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City

We took a trip to China with some amazing friends, the Walkers.  We had such a blast with them and our two younger girls are best friends with their older two girls, and Monster just loves their youngest daughter.  It was wonderful going wth such good friends.

Our first stop for our tour was at Tiananmen Square in Beijing.  We had an amazing tour guide, Brian, with Tour China Guide.  He told us about all the amazing things we were seeing and gave us a lot of history behind what we were seeing. Before you get into Tiananmen Square, you pass a tower.  I can't remember the name or significance, but it reminded us of the Gates in Korea.  

Once we got to Tiananmen Square we were able to feel how super large it really is. We got super lucky and came on a day where there was room to breath at the square.  Brian told us that on Holidays, it is so packed you can't move and are shoulder to shoulder.  The square in made up of the Monument to the People's Hero, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong.  You can see the Museum and the Mausoleum here. We had to pass through the Square to get to the Gate of the Forbidden City.  I'm going to let Big Sis tell you about the Forbidden City.

Hello there, this is big Sis. What a spectacular adventure that we have been on this week. In our trip to China, one of the most famous places in the capitol of Beijing is called The Forbidden City. In 1402 the Prince of Beijing, Zhu Di, took over the throne, declared himself emperor and decided to make a grand palace in Beijing. It took over a million workers and 15 years to complete his palace.  All of the Ming Emperors stayed in the palace for the next 200 years and expanded the palace and made it even grander. The Qing Dynasty took over the palace and used it for the next 200 years. The reason that it is called The Forbidden City is because, well it's already in its name, it's forbidden to enter. Normal citizen weren't allowed to enter except for generals and commanders and people like that, so that's how it got its name. It wasn't allowed to be toured until around 1987 when the government then allowed people to explore and look at the palace from the inside. 

To enter into the Forbidden City, you have to first pass through the South Gate, which is called the Meridian Gate, also known as the Gate of Heavenly Peace.  The Gate is seen from Tinnamanen Square.  There is a large guarded area in front of the Gate, so to enter you have to go down a tunnel and around the side.  The Chinese Government controls this area very heavily. Right above the passageway into the Forbidden City on the Meridian Gate is a picture of Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong was the leader of the communist army that won in 1946 and founded the People's Republic of China, he was the first ruler to unify China after the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

The palace gets around 800,000 tourist per day the numbers continue to increase every day. To get into the palace, we had to push through a very small bridge that was unbelievably crowded. There were police everywhere. Us kids thought this was fun and so we all hooked together and made a human chain kinda thing. I could tell that the parents were so stressed because I heard the mom's constantly counting "1 child, 2 child, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7... Ok!" It was really annoying because we were literally shoved into the people in front of us from the people behind us. It was worse than Korea! We continued to push our way though the Meridian Gate.

Finally after 5 minutes of the constant pushing and shoving, we made it through the Meridian Gate and then walked into gate two, known as the Gate of Supreme Harmony. It was just as bad as the Meridian Gate, super crowded and chaotic, and so we stayed linked together. There wasn't much to see.  It was just a million people and huge open areas between the gates.

It was a long walk to get to the next gate looking area.  This wasn't a gate though, it was the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Luckily, traffic eased up after a couple minutes. The walk felt like 1/2 a mile from the Supreme Harmony Gate to the Hall. I think that it was a great idea to bring along friends because if there wasn't, Little A's would have faded away by the time that we got to the Supreme Harmony Hall, but when we got to the entrance they were to same way when we started. The Harmony Gate was really similar to the Meridian Gate, but I think that it was slightly bigger.

The design on the celling and the walls is so beautiful and so unique. It is very similar, yet different from the paint art in Korea. Korea uses more greens and in China they use more blues and reds.  Fun fact, when you look at the color of roofs in china, you might see that they are different colors, the colors actually show what class they are in. The color for royalty is gold and so by the time we got to Supreme Harmony Hall, it was very visible that the roofs were gold. The buildings were gorgeous and so different as we got from one gate to the other.

Finally after getting to the Supreme Harmony Hall, we made our way to the center of the palace, the kings throne room. The area was so big and open even when half of it was under construction, but there were some sections that you could see the ground was original because it was so uneven and slightly painful to walk on. In the very center was a particular building that was the middle point of this tour, The Grand Throne Room.

The bridge that we had to take had ancient and totally original rain gutters that were in the shapes of dragon heads. They were the sewers for the palace back then. The rain would fill and go down the drain and come out of the statues mouth. The chemical's in the rain has slowly eroded away the dragons but they are still used to this day.

Another fun fact, there are always two golden gilded lions that guard either temples or palaces. The boy dragon's paw in on a golden ball, and the girl has a little baby dragon under its paw. There were these two gilded lions protecting the Inner Palace. We didn't want to push through the million tourists to just see the throne and the King's bedchamber, so we moved on.

We saw a souvenir shop with ice cream, so we stopped for some. We ate our ice cream outside and we attracted our own little crowd of Chinese paparazzi. There was one little boy that wanted to eat his ice cream with us so he just came up and sat in the middle of us. It was really funny.

After we finished our treat, we went through the gate that lead to the highlight of the tour, the Queen's Garden or known as the Imperial Garden.

We sadly were just a few week too early to see the garden when it was blooming, but we had a few trees that were super pretty. The first thing we saw was the strangest rock formation that was so cool. We learned that the rock was a man-made rock, the workers made it using sticky rice, egg whites, and lime powder. You might think that this isn't possible, but this is completely true. There is such a thing. These rocks overtime have been eroded away to make these really strange shapes. 

What was also really unique was that the tree trunks that we saw had the strangest shapes too. There was one that had huge bumps all over, and this one, that I'm by that is entirely, evenly, spiraled around the entire tree trunk. It was so strange. The other trees that we saw had the strangest branches. It was so weird to see how these trees grew. They were beautiful, but more weird then you might think. The Queen's house's entry door has an arch of rocks that make it look like it is hand crafted, but it completely naturally made. We all loved this part because it was so interesting. beautiful, shaded, and different from the kings rooms. I loved this too. 

The Forbidden City was a one-way attraction.  Once you start walking, there is no choice but to continue forward.  We were lucky it wasn't a super hot day, but it was so much walking.  My feet hurt from all the walking.  My favorite was the Imperial Garden, but it was all really neat.  I am glad we came and saw the Forbidden City.