Visit to Forbidden City

     Despite the unappealing prospect of excess everything--crowds, lines, scale, splendor--I went to Forbidden City Monday.  It's China's largest and best-preserved cluster of ancient buildings and the world's largest surviving imperial palace complex.  It's the top tourist site in Beijing.
     It turned out to be excessive in all the ways I anticipated, starting with riding the subway in crushing crowd next to a threesome of rumpled, smoky travelers with lumpy gear that added to the crush.  I am so not-Chinese, I kept thinking....I don't see how I could ever get used to this....  That was the low point, though, right at the beginning, and my experience got better and better as the day went on.

     Forbidden City was so-named because no ordinary person, was allowed inside for 500 years.  Construction of the palace started about 600 years ago during the Ming dynasty and later became the home of the Qing emperors until 1924.  Most people enter through the Gate of Heavenly Peace, Tian'anmen, the image of Mao looking out at the throngs, which is on the far left underneath the two-eaved rooftop by the red flags.  It was from this gate that Mao declared the new People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949.  This gate looks out over Tiananmen Square across and to the right of the broad walkway you see here and 12 lanes of traffic to the right of the white barrier.  Straight, flat and wide--this Beijing walkway and road scene struck me as the exact opposite of what we've gotten used to in Hong Kong.

     This photo is taken from the Gate of Supreme Harmony.  It looks out toward the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the largest and most important of the buildings in the imperial complex, which was used for ceremonial occasions.  The expansive courtyard between the gate and the hall supposedly could hold an audience of 100,000.
     The Chinese emperor considered himself the son of Heaven, so everything in the imperial palace needed to reflect his vaulted status and that's why mere mortals were not allowed to set foot inside the complex.

     This is a 250-ton marble carriage path carved with images of dragons and clouds, which was originally dragged into Beijing on ice.  The emperor was carried in his sedan chair into the Three Great Halls on this path--the Halls of Supreme Harmony (mentioned above), the Hall of Middle Harmony and pictured here, the Hall of Preserving Harmony.
















   

     My favorite part of the complex was the Imperial Gardens.  I can imagine that the Chinese royalty enjoyed the respite there from the weighty hugeness and elaborateness of the palace much more than I did.   Located in the eastern part of the gardens was this bed of spring-flowering yellow, pink and white trees, quite beautiful.  For the Chinese, East traditionally is associated with springtime, so this was an appropriate place to end my visit to Forbidden City on a fine spring day.