The Forbidden City, Beijing.

Everyone has heard of and read something about The Forbidden City or ‘The Palace Museum ‘ as it now known as! To everyone, us included it will always be The Forbidden City! I had been told that the City was big, and that is no exaggeration...it is simply huge!

The Inner Golden Water River

The City is set out with the main buildings in the centre of the site, fronted by enormous courtyards, with auxiliary buildings to the sides of this main setup. Apparently there are something like 900+ buildings on the site, so I think more than one visit is required, now there is a brilliant excuse for going back sometime!

The Hall of Supreme Harmony, just to give you some idea of the scale of the place…

A closer view.

I will try to name some of the Palaces and Halls but I have to admit I am using the internet to help me here, so hopefully I will get at least some of them with the right names!! The weather was nice but the air quality was not good that day, which had resulted in some of the photos not being their best.. another valid reason for a re-visit sometime??

One of the first things you notice on entering the City are the roofs, which are all gold in colour as opposed to the blue and green colour seen on other important buildings. Yellow is the colour of the Emperor hence the golden roofs. Yellow is my favourite colour, hmm maybe I have some connection with the Emperors then? Haha! Also I did promise to show you the roof with the ten animals on in a previous blog, here it is! These animals are on the roof ridge of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. It is the only building in the country to be permitted this number of animals. The animals are led by a man riding a phoenix, and they are followed by an imperial dragon.

10 animals

 

Erm what is cooking for dinner tonight???

The Forbidden City is undergoing an immense restoration programme, I believe it will take about 10 years to complete, it was very interesting seeing the un-restored buildings as well as the ones that have been done.

One of the side buildings, and not many people in sight!!

We spent 5 hours wandering around the City, and we still did not see everything. We met various holidaymakers on our visit to China and were amazed that that they had spent just half a day looking round the City, personally I would like to go back again and see all the things we missed!!

An unrestored building, see how muted the colours are!

Looking across to Beihai Park, more about that in a later blog.

Once again I am going to split this blog into two parts, mainly because there are just so many photos to share but also because I think the Imperial Garden deserves a blog in its own right.

Below are two Imperial Lions guarding a gate, one is male and one female, which is which and why? No cheating now!! I will put the answer below the photos in a few days

Back to Beijing..

Just before we return to Beijing I have to share a couple of photos with you of the amazing hotel we stayed at in Xi’an. The lobby was so big the whole of the Library where I work could fit in there with room to spare...and marble everywhere. Outside was a beautiful large pond with an enormous statue of the Emperor and some of his generals.

 

We again travelled overnight by train back to Beijing, before we got on the train my daughter and, ok I admit it me too, kept half the waiting room amused, we weren’t really bad just having a giggle between us but a lot of people were grinning at us .... Once on the train, we had quite a wait for the trolley but soon settled in for a couple of beers, just to help us sleep you understand!

I was awoken at 6am by the sun shining under the curtain at the window, so I had to take a peek, the sight was amazing. It was daylight, the sun was rising above a serene Chinese scene, with mist under the trees, just beautiful! I had to try to catch it on my camera, I wasn’t really expecting very good photos but some turned out ok. It was really interesting watching the scenery zip past, and seeing the country people in their trucks, cars and on their bikes going to work. I also noticed that most of the dwellings looked quite shabby, a kind of on- going shanty town, with here and there a beautiful painted Chinese Gateway, which made me wonder what used to be in that particular place. It was a magical journey for me, and another part of the holiday I will never forget.

Wild Goose Pagoda, dinner and a show.

The tea ceremony

After we left the Terracotta Warriors we were taken to a tea house for a well earned cuppa, and an unexpected tea ceremony which was wonderful. I bought some Lychee tea and am about to go and make myself a cup right now! It is good for the skin apparently but it just tastes good to me!

Museum exhibits

Then it was back to Xi’an, where we visited a large Museum, which was very interesting but it had a been a hot and tiring day and we knew we were going to visit the Wild Goose Pagoda, so we had a very quick look round the museum, then our guide found us and we asked if we could go to the Wild goose Pagoda sooner than planned. Sindy agreed and off we went.

The Wild Goose Pagoda

The Wild Goose Pagoda is a working Buddhist Monastery, the Pagoda itself is the Library. Apparently a few years ago the building started to lean to one side, due to the weight of the books inside!! The books were all moved, the building repaired, the books all put back and hopefully the building will now last another couple of hundred years. It was also noticeable that because the buildings are in constant use, everything inside was spotlessly clean. I will be doing a blog about the Forbidden City very soon, the interiors of the buildings there are noticeably dusty!

The Buddhist Monks pray here daily.

Probably rung to summon the monks.

Another amazing ceiling!

The Pagoda is surrounded by the monk’s garden, it is a beautiful place, very calm and peaceful, with chickens running around, birds in cages hanging from the trees, Buddha statues and large stones extolling the virtues of a garden. Just wonderful .

Porcelain plaques all round the walls

Another wonderful ceiling

We spent a very pleasant hour in and around the Pagoda then it was back to the Hotel, where we were booked for dinner and a show in the Hotels own Theatre. The dinner was dumplings, which are totally unlike our dumplings, they are pasta wrapped around various fillings, you dip these in a type of vinegar and they are just great! We had dumplings shaped like swans, ducks and peacocks, and filled with all varieties of meat and fish, mmmm yummy! After dinner the show started, it was lovely to see a Chinese show, it was very colourful and entertaining, a great ending to a very busy but lovely day! We slept well that night I can tell you!

Dumplings