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Published: July 23rd 2006
From the title of this entry, you can deduce that I'm quite fond of Beijing. With it's grandiose Royal Palace, great and mighty Great Wall, exquisit Summer Palace and historic Tombs and Temples, what's not to like. Well, the city itself is rather drab and characterless and it's bloody history is quite depressing, but then good outweighs the bad.
The tour to the Great Wall definetely did not dissappoint. It was beautiful and majestic as the many photos taken of it, by many different people, shows, from multitudes of angles. Walking or rather climbing it also was an exhilarating experience. One could feel the great drop in temperature as one reach some of the bastion at the peaks. I amazing felt energized by the climb rather than fatigued.
And the Royal Palace. Words can't accurately describe it's hugeness and spendor. My heart ached for the commoner in the old days, who could only see it from the outside with envy or who had to travel all around it to get to point A to B.
And the Summer Palace, it was an epitome in beauty. It's geographic location made great use of it architectural functions. The palace on
the hill, overlooking a beautiful lake with surrounding pavilions and bridges, were a photographer's heaven.
The Ming Tomb was a bit of a dissappointment. It was beautiful externally, but with the long line waiting to enter, one would think it was filled with beautiful treasures or frescos, yet it was basically a plain empty chamber. We can thank the Red Guards, during the Cultural Revolution for this, as they destroyed it in their fanatic "down with the old" frenzy.
Beihai Park with it's unusual Tibetan white Dagoba was nice and the lake with people enjoying rowing boats.
I thought that Tianmen Square would be on the tour, but we only passed by in the vehicle. It seems the memorary of the Demonstrations were still on the minds of the Leaders, and didn't want crowds gathering in the Square, more than it was needed. It was not too far from my hotel, and one night, I went to it on my own. After crossing an underground tunnel to get to it, there were several soldiers in the empty square. They started heading towards me, so I just scurried back into the crossing tunnel.
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