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Asia 2009: Day 11 (Beijing, Part 2)
Posted on October 18th, 2009 1 commentFor day two, we went into the heart of Beijing. It is a beautiful, well-maintained, and very modern city. While the city has its old parts, it has tons of new construction, some of which was Las Vegas style over-the-top. It’s like they have so much money that they don’t know what to do with it.
Our first stop was Tiananmen Square, which was absolutely packed with people (mostly Chinese). The line for the Mao Zedong mausoleum was insane. Next up was the Forbidden City, which was huge. We were pushed through at a fairly quick pace, and I’m told we missed some interesting stuff that was off the beaten track a bit. After lunch we went to the Temple of Heaven. It was funny seeing the main building there, as I remembered it from the China Pavilion at EPCOT.
After all that was done it was time for another long bus ride back to our ship. Chinese immigration officials took forever to clear us, so we left several hours late.
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- Tianamen Square
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- Very famous photo spot
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- Jeff and Chairman Mao
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- Soldier and Mao
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- Monument at the center of the square
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- Our guide seemed reluctant to talk about the incident 20 years ago
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- Great Hall of the People
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- Soldiers marching
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- One of the gates to the Forbidden City
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- Past the first gate
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- I think only the emperor himself could use this bridge
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- I can’t remember which building was which
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- Little statues line the corners of the roofs
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- One of two lions on guard
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- Cool architecture abound
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- Nice ceilings
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- It does start to get a bit repetitive after a while
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- Nice detail on the temples, which were refurbished a few years ago
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- Guardian turtle
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- Crane
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- I’m obsessed with their roofs
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- They used these for fighting fires
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- Distant temple
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- I got a good laugh out of this. It was a really nice toilet though.
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- Corridor
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- Nice carvings
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- Imperial garden
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- Pagoda in the garden
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- Temple across the street and up the hill from the Forbidden City
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- Part of the Temple of Heaven; this round temple is for praying for a good harvest
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- Inside the temple
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- Jeff and gate
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- Cool carvings
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- Smoggy Xingang sunset
1 responses to “Asia 2009: Day 11 (Beijing, Part 2)”
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notice that only temples will receive the “three wings” (highest-ranked) roof design, as they represent the heaven.
imperial buildings like the Forbidden City get two wings.
common buildings like a poor man’s house get only a wing.
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Liu October 27th, 2009 at 23:20