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Published: September 13th 2009
Mao's Statue
Statue in front of Mao's Mausoleum - there's four of them all up I think.Hello Everybody!
We slept in this morning so didn’t bother with our lessons unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it…Anyway, we took the opportunity to sleep in because we’re getting a bit desperate for sleep now with all the walking we did yesterday at the Temple of Heaven. We got up at about 11:00 and relaxed around the house a bit and eventually left to go see Tiananmen Square.
They have a mausoleum there dedicated to Chairman Mao, and inside they have his embalmed body (or a wax double - there’s a bit of conjecture on that matter) where you can file through and by some flowers to rest at his feet (which apparently are collected at the end of the day and resold). Unfortunately, it’s only open until 11:00, so we well and truly missed it, having arrived at about 2:00. But that was OK, we just wandered around the square for a while and made our way to Tiananmen Gate, at the North end of the square.
Once again, things have been spoiled a bit by the upcoming anniversary celebrations in October. They have put a massive partition in the middle of the
Mao's Mausoleum
8:00 - 11:00 are ridiculous opening hours. Honestly, he's dead, I don't think he'll mind. square which cuts it in half. It doesn’t really matter, it just makes it hard to gauge the actual size of the square. Apparently it was designed to accommodate 1 million people - I’m not sure if that is now that they have built the Mausoleum or not - so it’s a massive place, about three times the size of the Red Square in Moscow apparently. It takes about 10-15 minutes to walk from one end to the other. It’s going to be incredible come 1 October - I haven’t really decided if I want to be there or not, on one hand it would be awesome to see that many people and the processions and everything, but on the other hand, it would be awful to see that many people and the processions and everything. I think Beijing is going to be a bit of a nightmare that day, but let’s see what happens. If this is the 60th anniversary, I hate to think what the 50th must have been like!
Anyway, if you walk through a subway that runs under the road at the North end of Tiananmen, you come to the gate, and if you keep
Tianenman
Note the annoying barricades under the ubiquitous red flags walking north from there, you eventually hit the Forbidden City. No words can explain this place, it’s just awesome. It really is a city in itself, in fact there’s way too much to have a look at in one day. I think Susie’s a bit old-building’ed out, but if she needs to go shoe-shopping again some time while we’re here, I’d love to go through there again and have a look at the North end a bit, we only really got to look at the South in any depth.
So the Forbidden City was cool. But what was awesome was that while we were wandering around the city, we bumped into Tom & Emmalita - our friends from Brissie. We knew they were in China, but didn’t know when they were in Beijing, and definitely didn’t know they were touring the Forbidden City on that day! What are the chances? A city with the population of Australia roughly, and we ran into two friends. Total spinout. So we joined up the with the guide they paid for and had another 15 minutes looking at stuff, before we had about half an hour just wandering around the city ourselves.
Gate
With the Forbidden City in the Background, and Chairman Mao looking at me disapprovingly. If you can brave the guards yelling at you to hurry up, it’s a magical place at closing. To stand in that city when there’s nobody else around is awesome, you get a much better feel for the place, instead of feeling you’re in a tourist attraction. So we did that for a bit, and then we showed Tom & Emmalita the sights of Beijing (because we’re basically locals now!).
We went to dinner at a little restaurant on a corner in a Hutong, and realized that for the first time we didn’t have Kate or Lloyd ordering for us, so we freaked out. BUT, luckily, the night before I had bought a shirt from a shop called Plastered T-Shirts (definitely worth a look if you get to) which had the name of a really famous Chinese dish (Kung Pao Chicken in the west). I just pointed to my shirt and got a great meal! Woohoo!!!
And the shirt made me ridiculously popular, it seems to be the funniest thing that has ever happened in Beijing for me to be wearing that shirt (and just so you know, it definitely means what I thought it means, there’s not
Guard and Mao
Which is more scary? some embarrassing double entendre). So that’s made me a lot of friends.
After that, we went to a bar for a couple of beers, tossed up whether to have a massage, chickened out, and went home to bed. Tomorrow - the Summer Palace.
What a spin-out day!
Hope everybody is well and having stacks of fun, talk to you all later.
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malwethien
The Misanthropologist
hi
Hello..was just looking at your Beijing blogs. Nice! I was in Beijing in June, 2009 and I absolutely loved it. I will also blog about it later.... By the way...in case you haven't been yet - don't miss the Peking Duck at Li Qun Roast Duck Restaurant, allegedly the ones who started it all. Enjoy your stay!!