China Trip Day 5 The forbidden city |

19 July 2009

Looking good Mao

We had organized with Jiaao and Xiao the night before to meet up and go to the forbidden city and Tiananmen square, as the night wore on the meeting time grew steadily later in the day. So it was fairly late when we finally kicked off and caught the train to Tiananmen. The square was packed with people and a little claustrophobic for someone used to a bit more space. Tiananmen square is the largest square in the world and apart from Mao’s frozen corps and a statue dedicated to fallen heros it’s well, a big empty square, awesome. We got some photos and headed across the road (Chan un Ave) to the Forbidden City.

In the square

I thought the square was claustrophobic it had nothing on the crush of people attempting to get into the Forbidden City. After going through a couple of gates (massive outer walls) we came to a pay point and a 1-hour long queue. Lucky for us, a hawker who for a 10 RMB surcharge sold us genuine tickets to get in. We sent Xiao ahead just to make sure they were genuine (after promising to bail her out of jail if they weren’t, well eventually anyway) lucky for Xiao the tickets turned out to be real.

Mao’s garden shed

Lost in the forbidden city

The Forbidden City is a large and interesting array of buildings with some highly ornate decorations. Also it was interesting to note that the crowed didn’t fan out on the other side of the gates they all stayed huddled together in one long line in the middle of some massive spaces so if you took a couple of steps to the right or left you had plenty of space to wander around and enjoy the scenery.

Gardens near the back of the forbidden city

Playing in the Emperors domain

After we were done with the massive crowds and exploring the city we made our way down into the main part of town. There was an inner city market going on and apart from the usual trinkets and junk you find at most markets, there were some crazy varieties of food like scorpions on a stick, in fact there were quite a few things on a stick like centrepieds, grasshoppers, sea horses and star fish just to name a few. We settled for some spicy pork and squid on a stick, well at least that is what I think it was. Then we carried on checking out the wares, we picked up a couple of bits and pieces for people back home and then to escape the hustle and bustle we stepped into a tea house to grab a few thimbles full of tea.

The market

Lunch anyone?

The teahouse was expensive by local standards so it was pretty much empty, but it did have some cool things in there. The tea was brought out on a tray that was around 5cm thick more like a box with a latticed top to catch any wayward drops. The teacups themselves were tiny with a cup inverted inside each one. This was to keep the tea hot for the first serve and the inverted thimble was kept in place by the suction caused by the liquid inside, very cool. The teapot itself was made with a porous earth that would soak up the liquid inside, in fact if you touched the outside of the pot, water would come to the surface. This means that over the life of the pot it would acquire and hold a distinct and unique flavor depending on the tea used and the age of the pot. Each pot is only used with one type of tea for its entire life and some of the pots have been around for over 1000 years, there were some of these pots with a story and timeline in glass cabinets around the walls of the teahouse.

The awesome tea house

The process was to fill the porous pot from a kettle, then filter the tea into a poring pot, then top up the tea cups, it was an awesome process and as there were no more than a couple of mouthfuls in each cup a continuous one.

Tiff and I made our way back to meet up with Song and Peichen while Jiaao and Xiao went to do some more shopping. After a shower and a bit of relax we decided to meet up at one of the converted Hutongs.

Hutongs are the original courtyard houses that used to be everywhere in Beijing. They are basically a number of houses all facing into a courtyard or small ally, the families that lived in the houses would pass them down generation to generation. Quite often you would get a situation where some of the women and older generations would look after the kids from the various houses during the day, while the younger generation would go off to work. From the stories the Hutongs had a real sense of community, however out with the old and in with the new. The central government is bulldozing down all the Hutongs and replacing them with new high-rise apartment blocks, that all look the same as each other and stretch for as far as the smog will allow you to see.

Never the less a couple remain and the one we went to see had some of the houses converted into bars, restaurants and small shops. We took a taxi to the drum tower and ate at one of the small restaurants just up from it. We had just finished and were walking It off when Jiaao and Xiao caught up with us. I finally managed to find a note book so that I could write down some of our adventures, I imagined China to be a place where pens and note pads rained from the skies, it would still be another day or so before I would come across a pen. We did however see a bloke out walking his pet goose in the balmy evening We settled into one of the roof top bars for a couple of beers when Jiaao started complaining about all the walking.

It is hard to describe the sights, sounds, aromas and vibrant atmosphere that was around the best way to describe it is magic. It was an awesome evening kicking it on the rooftop having a couple of ales with a few mates and watching the world go by.