Day 3 Beijing -- Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City

Today we began our tour, starting with the sights of Beijing.  The bus picked up our group at the hotel and drove us to Tiananmen Square.   The bus parked about two blocks away and we walked to the square along with throngs of people.  The square is supposed to be the largest metropolitan open space in the world, and we found it filled with thousands of people.  The morning was hazy, almost foggy, so the government buildings surrounding the square were indistinct and seemed even more distant than they were.  The Parliament building. a sprawling monolith of stone similar to government buildings all over the world, extends the length of the square framing one side.  The square is paved with cut stone tiles about two feet by one foot in size.  Our guide told us that with two people occupying each tile, the square could accommodate 1,000,000 people.  There is a huge LCD screen in the center of the square on which a video was showing.  There was also a gigantic hammer and sickle monument commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Communist Party in China.  There were hundreds of cameras on poles throughout the square.  On another side of the square, across a car-filled street, is the Forbidden City, the home of China's rulers for centuries.

We moved with the mass of humanity through a tunnel under the street emerging in front of the Forbidden City.  Then we walked over a bridge that spans the moat that surrounds the Forbidden City. The first building was adorned with a giant photograph of Mao Tse Tung.  As we walked inward, we came to a succession of similar buildings each having a function in the ancient emperors' governments The Emperor's residence was deep within the "city."   These buildings are traditional Chinese architecture with the wooden and brick walls and peaked tile roofs with wide overhangs and turned up corners.  Areas under the eaves and the gables of the buildings were highly decorated with intricate paintings and carvings.   This is all within an enclosing wall with large courtyards between the buildings.  We only went into one building, which was a wife's quarters and now is a jade museum.  Throughout this tour, we were surrounded constantly by thousands of people, sometimes elbow to elbow.  At each entry and exit place, we were bombarded with vendors selling fans, books, hats, and all manner of trinkets.

Leaving Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, we stopped for lunch, and then went on the Summer Palace.  The Summer Palace was the country home for the Emperor.  It is a compound of buildings surrounding a lake.  Apparently the Emperors could travel from the Forbidden City to the Summer Palace by boat.  We walked partially around the lake through a moving mass of humanity.  It was even more difficult to see the surroundings than it was at the square and the "city."  We took a boat back across the lake, a boat with a carved dragon's head at the front.

From the Summer Palace, we toured around Beijing in a bus seeing an array of new tall office and residential buildings among the 1950's concrete structures that continue to serve as offices and residences.  One interesting observation was that the old buildings had air conditioner units hanging from the sides.  We drove through the area with the Olympic Stadium, Swimming building, and other buildings built for the 2008 Olympics.  It is amazing how much construction and renovation were spurred by the Olympics .  Beijing, a city of over 17,000,000 population is rapidly becoming one of the world's major cities.  The bus threaded its way through a massive amount of traffic, eventually bringing us back to the hotel.

The day was hot and humid, and the large crowds were daunting.  We knew that China has a population of 1.3 billion, but we didn't expect to see so much of it in one day.  Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City are impressive in their size and complexity, in general Beijing looks like something built to be functional.  Tomorrow, we see the Great Wall.

Pictures:  Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Beijing New