Forbidden City (Day Two)

To see the changing of the guards at Tiananmen Square, scheduled at sunrise and sunset everyday, we left the hotel at around 5.30AM. A 20-min taxi ride and we were dropped off at the Square. Now, I expected few people to be around this early in the morning..boy, was I wrong. There were hundered of people already at the square and hundreds more racing towards it. Now, the chinese crowds behave strangely,..they run for no apparent reason(I have seen this at immigration points at Macau and Zhuhai too).
We could not get close enough to position ourselves to see the guards marching. I thought we had lucked out. But suddenly, the crowds parted, and we saw a group of about 20 soliders marching towards us. We got to take a few pictures of them and with them. Then the flag was raised and it was all over.

There is also this giant score board with a countdown to the Beijing Olympics and the motto for the games 'One World, One Dream' written out using flowers.

frommers.com had suggested the Grand Hotel Beijing for breakfast and thats where we headed. Its about a 10 minute walk, east of the Forbidden City. This restaurant has a breakfast buffet as well as a la carte options. Bit pricy, but a good option if you want a western breakfast.

Walked back to the Forbidden City gates. The first gate is Tiananmen Gate. We paid 15 Yuan to climb up the gate and take in a view of the square. This gate's ramparts is the place from where Chairman Mao declared the People' Republic of China. By now, it seemed like the crowds in the square had almost doubled since the time we had been there a couple of hours earlier.

Past the Qianmen gate, and we entered Forbidden City. We had to buy another ticket(cost 60 Yuan) to enter the Forbidden City . Since we got the audio tour as recommended by Lonely Planet, it cost us an additional 40 Yuan and a 100 Yuan deposit. The audio tour consists of a wireless device with the layout of the Forbidden City. Red lights blink to indicate your current location and the corresponding audio starts off automatically. Now the audio was slightly out of sync to my location at all times but it was not totally off and made sense. A constant red light indicates locations you have not visited yet and once you have visted a particular building/palace, the red light indicating that location turns off.

I think at least half of China's 1 billion plus people were at Forbidden City October 2, 2005..it sure seemed like it. There were way too many people. At the first palace, we tried to get close to the entrance to catch a glimpse inside(the entry was cordoned off), and it was a no-go. Too many people and they were all pushing as if there was some place to go. Another Chinese crowd phenomeneon..people push and shove for no reason.

So, we ended up walking around just looking at the palaces from the outside. We walked from South to North, and then back tracked to see the palaces on the East wing of the city. We also visited the Imperial Garden. Now, I had read somewhere that there is a Starbucks inside the Forbidden City..I could not find it. The Imperial garden does have snack bars though.


We finished our tour at around 1.30 and decided to go to the the Thai restaurant at the Holiday Inn Lido (another frommers recommendation). For some reason, I thought this hotel was pretty close to FC. Its actually about a 30 min ride. But it turned out to be a pretty good choice. Good food. This hotel has a number of restaurant options in addition to souvenir shops, beauty salons
and clothing/jewellery shops. You could spend a good portion of your day browsing the shops all within the air-conditioned comfort of the hotel premises. After lunch, we headed back to Jingshan park. A short climb up a hill, adn we we had pretty good view of the Forbidden City. there is also a Buddha temple at the top of the hill. Lucky for me, it was a clear day and I could see the layout of the Forbidden City and also a view of Beihai park.

In the evening, we went to the Bejing opera. There was one theatre, the Liyuan Theatre, pretty close to the hotel. When we got there, the only tickets remaining were the 60Yuan ones (the 180 and 280 Yuan ones were sold out). We were expecting to get nose-bleed seats. Surprisingly, it was a pretty small theatre. The pricier seats were set up with tables and there was free tea and snacks served. Not a big difference in terms of distance from the stage.

We did get to go and see the performers putting on their make-up and also take pictures with 2 of them (extra 10 Yuan per picture). They had 2 shows of 30 minutes duration each. Pretty amazing moves from some of the characters.

Up Next..The Great Wall @ Mutianyu