The Forbidden City

Beijing, July 5

Just like Qian Men and Tian An Men Square and the Great Wall there is no way to be prepared for the Forbidden City. It's official name now is the Palace Museum. It is not forbidden at all to anyone with the price of admission and it is a museum, there are some static displays of artifacts in quite a number of buildings. However the word "museum" carries with it for me the sense of one building or perhaps a few interconnected buildings. The Palace Museum is truly a city that has been preserved on site. It is not one palace the way we might think of Buckingham Palace, but a vast array of palaces and audience halls and pavilions and gardens. There are some small, specialized buildings and some enormous palatial buildings and all sizes of buildings in between. This is the first thing I wanted to show in the pictures I selected for this article: the scale of this historic site is incredibly large. For example there are three gigantic gates and three immense courtyards to go through before you have to pay admission. As I said to someone today, one could easily spend at least half a day taking pictures of these areas and probably still not capture everything there is to see, and these are just the preliminaries.

The second thing I wanted to show with the pictures I selected is the astounding beauty of this city. In the six hours I wandered around I took about two hundred pictures. I wanted to be reasonably selective and I wanted representative material since I knew I would never remember all of the names of all of the places where I took pictures. From what I saw people doing today there are cell phones all over Beijing with hundreds of pictures of the City all taken during a three hour tour. I did eventually go into the Treasures area where there are priceless items used by the emperors of mostly Qing (about 1640 to 1911) but also Ming (about 1350 - 1640) dynasties. Bowls and cups of jade, crystal, jasper, gld, silver, cloisonne, and other materials, miniature gardens made with jewels, Ancient inscriptions on stone "drums", over two thousand years old, Imperial seals, a couple of collections of material for the last emperor. They are dazzling. But there is magnificent beauty in the architecture and that's what I wanted to show in my photos.

Third I wanted to show how much I enjoyed my time in the City / Museum. For that I need to tell a couple of stories. People want to take my picture, they especially want to have pictures of themselves or their children together with me. And I have always been pleased to do so. Today I decided that I would also ask them if I could take their picture, if that seemed to be a polite thing I could do. In one of the big courtyards a man asked if he could take a picture of me with his son, who appeared to be about four or five. I agreed but we both had to encourage the son to stand close enough to me so that it looked like we were together. Then I asked to take a picture of the two of them, and he agreed. You can see the son is much happier to be beside his father. About an hour later we saw each other again, this time there were two women with them. I readily agreed to a few more pictures.

Later on in the afternoon, perhaps 1.30, I sat down on the edge of some building to take a rest. I sat down about two meters away from a little girl who was sitting beside a woman (her mother perhaps). After some minutes and with considerable persuasion from the woman the little girl reluctantly agreed to look at me long enough for me to look at her in what I hoped was a friendly way. After a few minutes we even waved a little at each other. Then two more women and two more kids showed up (sisters? cousins?). The women asked to take pictures of me with the kids and I agreed. Then I took three of my own. I uploaded one of them is here. Then I remembered I had some Canadian coins in my bag so I gave each kid their own coin from Canada. That was a big hit with the women anyway. Then the little girl in the picture brought me a gift of a Chinese flag. A few minutes later they gathered up all their stuff and went out across the courtyard.

There have been many little times like this. I don't have a common language with almost everyone in Beijing but many people make an effort to communicate with me. Almost always we have a good conversation despite the language barrier. It is usually a short conversation, but I have generally been treated with courtesy and respect. I have had the occasional "dirty" look on the subway, but that happens in Toronto too.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring. It would be nice if it brought cooler weather and some rain, if the rain lowers the humidity. However I don't think that is going to happen until next week, looks like mid to high 30s with little or no chance of rain until at least next Monday. I will keep drinking lots of water and finding air conditioned spaces.