Forbidden City 1

    Gail and I took a trek through the Forbidden City with Jinghua as our guide. The weather was beautiful. Here are the results.

This is the big entrance (where you pay the money). The street and Tiananmen Square are behind us. You can get an idea of the imposing character of the place from this shot.

The Chinese sure know how to cross water! We would make a little foot bridge; they make a monument. Note the ornamentation on every post. Wow!

Gail was impressed, too. And who wouldn't be?

Here is one of the many traditional Chinese lions that are guarding the buildings. Note the many building to be seen, even in this modest section of the total place. In fact, there are 9,999 buildings in all. It's not 8,888 or 7,777 because 9 was the lucky number in those days. The emperors were really fortunate that the lucky number wasn't 1, or else they could have had only 1,111 buildings!

We were early enough in the season that there weren't so many people there, as you can see. To my great surprise, the water was so clean that healthy plants were growing in it. You could see them clearly, even in this photograph.

You can get a sense of the scale of the place from these people near and far. It's huge!

For some reason, I noticed the bricks more this time than on my previous two visits. I imagined the emperors there so many hundreds of years ago.

I think the bricks outnumbered even the groups of visitors.

Sunflower Tours, please stay with me! Gail is just starting to climb the steps.

Ahead to Forbidden City 2
Back to BNU 3
Back to Beijing March 2003