Friday in the Forbidden City

For various reasons, too boring to get into now, I will jump to Friday, day 6 on the ‘shanks’ mare’ tour of Beijing.  We spent the day walking to and touring The Forbidden City.  We approached it from the north, through Jingshan Park because although it was not obvious, I had read that at its centre there’s a hill that gives an overview of much of the city, forbidden and otherwise.  It turned out to be true.  Then, continuing to use the compass on the iphone, Jay took us out the south gate of the park, then along the outside of the east wall of the Forbidden City and right to the Meridian Gate, in the middle of the south end, which is the main entrance.  At this point, we were in the middle of the Moon Festival crowd and spent quite a few minutes trying to figure out where to buy tickets and how to enter.  Once we did, it didn’t take too long to get into the enormous ‘foyer.’  Even before you pass through the Gate of Supreme Harmony, there’s a ceramics gallery on your right that I wanted to see.  Jay who had been sneezing even before we got to Beijing was suffering from a full blown cold by Friday, so he merely walked into that gallery and proclaimed, “When you’ve seen one pot, you’ve seen them all.”  I discovered that that is not true and spent quite a bit of time there.  I picked him up where he was resting on a bench as I exited, and we walked through into the vast area that holds the three halls of harmony.  Just walking up to and around them takes time.  It’s impossible to believe that they constituted a mere part of an emperor’s home.   Jay chose not to visit the Clock Exhibition Hall and the Nine Dragon Screen, but I found them both worth a look.  I had read in Alain Peyreyfitte’s book, The Immobile Empire, about the amazing clocks, as well as other examples of what England then considered to be the jewels of it’s Industrial Revolution, that Sir George Macartney had presented to the Qianlong Emperor in 1793 and how the latter had treated them as if they were no better than any of the other tribute that China accepted as its due from all the states trying to curry its favor.  I knew that they had been kept; however, and was curious to see what they looked like.  Many of the clocks were extravagant, but I was surprised to see how small the actual clock parts were.  After wandering through the Imperial Garden among the ancient cypresses, we exited via the north gate and headed, weary and hungry, back to the hood for an early dinner at the restaurant where we had eaten the garlic-laden eggplant.  This time, we enjoyed a cold beer, two soothing soups and some bacon and chive skewers, after which we rested in our room.  Then we went for a short walk in the area near the hostel.  I went down for an early night with my book, and Jay went out to a bar with some people he’d met in the hostel and gone out with earlier in the week.  

On Saturday, we had the Peking breakfast in the hostel, took a short walk in the hutong and flew back to Incheon.  But not before we had made up for our futile day of shopping on Wednesday by buying lots of goodies for mom, dad, May and the girls in the duty free area of the Beijing airport.  In fact Saturday was a bumper day for shopping, considering the fact that Jay and I both dislike it.  May and the girls were not going to return from their 2 days on an island off Incheon until Sunday, so after unpacking in the apartment, which mostly involved throwing dirty clothes in the basket to be washed on Sunday, we took the subway to EMart and bought the wave board that I wanted to get for Jin Hee and Min Hee for Chuseok, the Korean Autumn holiday, as well as some food to make a dinner for Sunday.  Then we set up all the gifts for May and the girls and went to bed, back in the clean breezes of Song do.  I hadn’t been bothered by the air in Beijing, but Jay had, and I certainly was aware of how fresh the air smelled when we got out of the airport in Incheon.

Beihai Lake and part of Beijing from the hill in Jingshan Park.

The Forbidden City from the other side of the same hill

Some of the porcelain reminded me of Maureen's work

A roofline on a building in the Forbidden City

A British made clock brought to China in the late eighteenth century

Jay's cold catches up with him on the shanks' mare tour of the Forbidden City

One of the nine dragons and a man posing proudly beside it

A lion with his paw on the globe, representing the emperor's power

A lioness playing with her baby, representing the emperor's potency, or so the story goes