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Published: November 5th 2010
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This is my second day in Bejing - what an amazing place and we have only scratched the surface. The city of Bejing is approx 190km by about 140km and houses 22 million people.
Yesterday most of the tour group arrived at different times. Those that had arrived had our first experience using chopsticks. Most of us are determined to master them, although some of the chinese food is more difficult to pick up than others. Success today at lunch - I didn't have to use a fork at all, things are improving!
Anyway this morning we went to Tiananmen Square. It is such an amazing place - it is so huge that the photo's don't do it justice. We took a walk around the square but fortunately we didn't line up to see Mao's Tomb - the queue went right around Tiananmen Square. Apparently people wait up to two hours for a 20 second glimpse of Mao's entombed body. Today Tianamen Square is used for ceremonies and approx 1 million people can fit. It felt like many of those people were there today as we walked around.
We then went to the highlight of the day -
the Forbidden City. This was the centre of the Chinese empire for 500 years for both the Ming and Qing Dynasties. As we walked through the South Gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace), we had cross one of five bridges over the moat (depending on who you were depended on which entrance you used back when the City was inhabited). The first section is the outer courts - a piece of trivia here: there are 15 layers of bricks on the floor of the courtyard, layed criss crossing each other. This apparently made it impossible for people to tunnel thus avoiding a surprise attack. The courtyard was huge and you could imagine it bustling in its day - not that the royalty saw much of the outer court. It took us a while to explore all of the different sections of the Forbidden City. From the outer court you went into another section where the emperor saw his advisors (no ladies were allowed in this section) and carried out all of the important business. This was called the Palace of Supreme Harmony. It is the largest wood palace existing in China. The sense of history here is amazing. Everywhere you look
there are intricate carvings and artwork, preserved after all of this time. Even the buildings are made of wood with flexible joints in case of an earthquake. The inner sanctium was the private residences of the emperor, emporess and the concubines. You could spend a whole day here just exploring and there is no way that my words can do it justice.
We tried Peking Duck for dinner - one of Bejings local delicacies. The duck is only a couple of months old and for the last month the duck if fed four times a day. It was facinating watching the chef carve each duck into exactly 120 pieces. Peking Duck is actually a type of wrap where you put a little bit of duck into some soy sauce, place it in the wrap, put a few spring onions and cucumber in and wrap it all up. Quite yummy and the duck tasted so good. Tomorrow is a big day - the Great Wall.
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