Day 16 - Thursday, Oct. 31 - Hallowe’en in Beijing

Tienanmen Square, with 70th anniversary sculpture on left

Qilin Column and Forbidden City

Onto the bus at 8:00, our driver again defies Beijing rush hour.  First stop:  Tienanmen Square.

       The square is by the old city walls, which are gone now; only two towers remain.  There was no square here until the 1950's (the Russian period) when buildings were razed to make a Lenin-like Red Square.  Located on it are the National Museum and the tomb of Mao, who wasn’t cremated like all ordinary city residents are.  No room for cemeteries!  The name Tienanmen means “the blessed gate of peace”.  It’s rife with slogans:  “Long live the Chinese people”, “Long live world unity”...  There’s also a flower sculpture remaining from the October 1st ceremony of the Chinese government’s 70th anniversary of existence.  And a column with the Chinese dragon-esque monster, the qilin,  a mythical hooved chimerical creature with one-horn (based on the giraffe first seen when Chinese ships pushed as far as Africa in the Middle Ages).  Plus a memorial to the people’s heroes.  What there is not is any trace of the man standing up to the tank.

Emperor's Palace, Forbidden Palace

We go through a gate, and under the portrait of Mao, into the Forbidden City.  Constructed from 1406 to 1420, it will celebrate its 600th anniversary next year.  This is where the Ming emperors lived and worked.  Stanley walks us in through the ceremonial south gate, the middle of the five gates, which only the emperor had the right to use... and the empress, but only on the day of her wedding.  Underfoot are 17 layers of brick intended to prevent anyone from tunneling in.

       One by one, we penetrate the compounds leading to the inner sanctum of the emperor’s palace, one inside the other like a Russian matruschka doll.  The first is the Hall of Supreme Harmony.  On either side are symbolic (?!) treasure houses.

       Ornamentation is everywhere.  Colorful painting to decorate the beams of walkways.  Animals on the corners of roofs; the more animals, the higher ranking the occupant.

       Then come the twelve palaces of the imperial concubines, served by eunuchs castrated almost at birth.  (What a life choice for your child!)  Then it’s the emperor’s compound, where poor Puyi, the last of the emperors, spent his entire life - as emperor, as prisoner of the Japanese, and even after there were no emperors any more.  He had a beautiful garden in this prison, with a koi pond and peonies and 300-year-old pine and cypress trees.

       Then it’s out by the north gate, which leads to a man-made hill with five Buddhist shrines, and off to lunch.  In addition to a turntable of dishes from different provinces, we’re served a “beggar’s chicken” cooked in a clay cast which one of us has to crack open with a mallet.

The afternoon starts with a bicycle-powered rickshaw ride through what little remains of the old city: the hutong.  Our ride through the narrow streets is cut short when a worker emptying the public toilets blocks traffic (and stinks up the air), so we have to retrace our path.

       The ride is followed by a visit to the home of a couple who is the fourth generation to live there - 160 years - and they, in turn, will pass it on to their daughter.  The lady of the house worked in a map-making plant, which smartphones have run out of business.  Her husband is an artist and I let myself be tempted by a blossoming plum tree sketch on rice paper that I’ll now have to carry for the rest of the trip.  Their small house has two areas - one for sleeping, one for living, separated by a curtain - plus a tiny kitchen... and its own minuscule bathroom!  It reminds me of the home I visited in Cuba.

Temple of Heaven

       The last stop of the day is to the Temple of Heaven.  To reach it, you walk through a public park where people are playing cards and a Chinese game called xiangji, or Chinese chess (see photo below).  Sometimes they even add some money to make it more interesting, even though that’s not allowed, and the guard doesn’t seem to mind.

       We can only look into the temple but its colors glow in the setting sun.  Here people traditionally prayed for a good harvest at the spring equinox, and at the winter solstice for a happy year with no locusts or other plagues.

       The two other buildings are rather dry explanations of all Stanley has already explained, except for a cross-section model of the temple and how it was built.  So it’s back to the bus and slow progress through rush-hour traffic again.

       We have to repack and leave our suitcases outside our hotel rooms for collection.  We won’t see them again until tomorrow night at the Sofitel Hotel in Xian.

       Hopefully!