Beijing City Tour

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Beijing City Tour.
The tour plan was good, it covered the top four attractions of the capital with two informative shopping stops. There was an Australian couple, two Greek girls living in London, a couple of lads from Costa Rica who were in Beijing for the Marathon, a Dutch girl who was doing some landscaping design in Xining and myself in the party. Only later I came to know that some of them had paid nearly twice as much as I did for the tour. I had miscalculated the time, had to rush out even without a shave as the guide was waiting in the reception.
First port of call was the Forbidden City. As the name implies it was forbidden for all except the Emperor’s immediate court and high officials. It was a "city" as the palace buildings sprawled over a wide area. Like a defensive fort there were inner and inner rings and in the days of the Empire access to various circles was strictly according to status. In a way it is a miniature of Beijing today, people given status according to inside which ring road you lived (ring roads are numbered 1 to 9 starting closest to the center concentrically). In the old days it was the rings of the Forbidden City, now it is inside which circular roads.
Another thing that strikes you is the number of people about, we barely had elbow room even in open places. In narrower places it was difficult to stay around your tour mates and guide. What made the crowds was the four day Chinese Holiday for Mayday. For the not so affluent Chinese the first tourist attraction is their capital city. But for such large crowds they were good humored and well behaved. Later as the statistics came out that more than 200,000 went through the turnstiles that day. The Dutch girl, Anna, was a fascination for many with her blonde hair and blue eyes and everyone in the crowd wanted a photograph with her.
With the walls protecting the courtyards it was stifling hot in the yards which were paved with slate like grey coloured bricks which were showing their age. The palace buildings themselves were very ornate with yellow roofs and red doors for the emperor. Even though entry was permitted into the buildings earlier, the damage caused by constant overuse forced the authorities to keep them off limits. The hierarchical system was so enshrined that even the queen were not allowed to wear same colours or remain at the same height as the emperor. There were places for different functions even a relaxation palace.
The Emperor had only one wife but had hundreds of concubines who did most of the work around the palace. There was fierce competition to be the king's favorite, to bear his child which would had made her life worthwhile.
From the Forbidden City we went to Summer Palace stopping on the way in a pearl factory shop where pearls were made and sold. There was an informative demonstration on quality and what happened to low grade products which was ground down to make skin cream additive. Only Anna bought something, she seemed the only one who was not backpacking. Later we stopped for lunch at a hotel, had a buffet dinner which was traditional Chinese and delicious.
The Summer Palace was built for one of the most powerful queens in Chinese history. Again it is on lavish palace grounds with connecting corridors between some of the place buildings. One particular one which is acclaimed as the longest in the world had pictures painted on both sides every meter. The paintings were unique, none of them repeated for the entire length of more than 500 meters. There was another large “Pleasure Palace” in front of a large man-made lake in the middle of which was an island connected by a characteristic bridge. Now the local people use this lake area for holiday fun, taking short punts on the lake where it is quite cool. By the time we finished the Summer Palace the weather was changing, there was a cooling wind and a hint of rain in the air and the girls were suffering the cold from the wind.
We proceeded to the Temple of Heaven stopping in a silk factory on the way. This time there again was a demonstration how different type of silks were produced, from the silk worm cocoon to spinning and weaving the garments. Cocoons made by two worms could not be untangled so had to be used for insulation purposes. A 150 euro duvet was not something I wanted.
The Emperor came to the Temple of Heaven to offer alms to the gods for the good harvest and fortune. Again it had an imposing entrance and small temples on the periphery but the central circular tower was of unique beauty in blue and turquoise colours. Temple of Heaven boasts nearly 300 hectares of which 80% is wooded, a cool heaven in the sprawling city. With the change in the weather we enjoyed the Temple of Heaven more than any of the earlier sights and by the time we finished there were tiny droplets falling. It started raining heavily when we were back in the tour bus. Perfect timing. I was quite tired when I got back to the hotel. Arranged with Tessa to go with Ryan and Alex for a tour of the city the next day.

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