The Forbidden City

As tomorrow will mark one week since our return to Japan, I thought I should continue my diary of our trip to Beijing. When we left off, Sam, Johnsson, and I had just walked through Tien'anmen Square and were headed to the Forbidden City.

First, more notes about size. You'll recall that I went on at some length about the intimidatingly massive structures surrounding the square, as well as the vast size of the square itself. Well, familiarize yourself with this map:


That tiny blue-highlighted square at the bottom is Tien'anmen Square, at 800 meters by 400 meters. The larger, red square above it is the Forbidden City, which takes up an area of over 700,000 square meters and contains over 800 buildings (the space in between them was the outer palace, space for guards and fortifications).

So, after walking through the Tien'anmen, this is what we saw:


The Meredian Gate was the main gate used by the emperor, and is the largest of the palace. The photo above is actually a panorama stitched together from 18 separate photos, representing a horizontal viewing area of about 200 degrees. We were standing in between the two outermost buildings (which are parallel in reality) when I took those. Translation: it's huge.

After going through the gate, we entered a very large square named after the gate on the northern edge, Taihemen, the Gate of Supreme Harmony. Aside from being staggeringly big, the most notabe feature of this square was the small river (the Golden River) that ran through it. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures for some reason. Through the Taihemen, we were greated by the Taihedian, the Hall of Supreme Harmony.


The hall was where Emperors ascended to the throne and were married, and is currently undergoing renovation. So we joined the crowds and headed on through the next gate to the Hall of Central Harmony, a similar, smaller structure, where the emperor rested before or between ceremonies. I believe the audio tourguide referred to it as "a place for the emperor to rest on his way from the Inner Palace to the Outer Palace." Beyond that lay yet another square, centered on the Hall of Preserving Harmony.


The hall is on that raised platform off to the left, and was used by the emperor for rehearsing important ceremonies. Up on the platform, throngs of Chinese tourists pushed and shoved in every direction, trying to glimpse the interior of the hall. Here is a group of them manhandling a giant copper pot, used to hold water for fire-fighting purposes:


Anyway, from the top of the platform, we walked around the back of the hall and could glimpse parts of the Inner Palace for the first time.


Beyond the tour group dressed in red, note the sea of golden roofs in the background. That's a small part of the inner palace. Just to be clear, the largest palace in Japan would have ended by this point. The main buildings of the Imperial Palce in Tokyo would probably fit inside the Square of Supreme Harmony. The Outer Palace is gigantic, and it only takes up about 1/3 the area of the whole thing.

The rest of the palace was a maze of hundreds of small buildings, constructed over the years for sons, daughters, wives, concubines, high officials, and the thousands of handlers everyone required. Many of the buildings on the eastern side seemed to have been built or renovated by the Qianlong Emperor in the late 1700s. Johnsson confirmed the importance of this particular emperor, noting that he de facto ruled for longer than any other Chinese sovereign. One of the things he had built was this opera stage:


That stage was apparently known as one of the three great stages of classical Chinese opera. Another was at the Summer Palace, which we visited last Friday. I forget where the third was.

Beyond this things honestly started blurring together. There was just so much, and after awhile, it was hard to distinguish whether a hall had been ordered built for Ci Xi, or merely occupied by her when she was Dowager Empress (to give an example). However, I do have some final photos that I believe nicely symbolize certain aspects of the whole palace.


This is just a post at the end of a handrail, but it's a good example of the detail around the whole palace. Even in the huge squares in the Outer Palace, everything has little touches like this. Those golden roofs? They're gold leaf laid over tubes of bamboo. At the end of every bamboo pole is a carving of a dragon. Thats several million dragons in the palace.


The inscription for this hall was gold inlaid on purple, which was pretty standard for every buidling of any size. There was a whole lot of purple everywhere in the palace (check out Wikipedia's explanation of the palace name for the reason why). I found it amusing how different emperors in different empires (the Byzantines) on opposite sides of the world both decided purple was a nice royal color.


More fine detail, this in the side of a path leading through the gardens in the back of the palace.


Note how you can't see the end of this hallway.


The rocks for this hill in the rear palace gardens had to be brought from Suzhou, in southern China. That wasn't easy prior to trains. The completed hill was probably 15-20 meters high, with perhaps the same width. On top was a small temple. What the emperor wanted, the emperor got. Finally, at the base of this hill:


A rare example of a well-written English sign.

Anyway, after exploring the back of the palace from about 11:00 to 3:30, we were finally overcome by hunger. We took a taxi to what Jingsong had described as "the best Peking duck in Beijing. Very authentic." The menu explained in Chinese, Japanese, and English how they only buy the healthiest ducks, and slow-roast them for 45 minutes to melt as much of the fat and cartilige as possible. We ate our duck with a soy-based sauce, with garlic paste, various julienned pickles, some ginger, and even sugar. Not all at once, but in varying combinations. It was delicious.


Johnsson agreed, delicious. After roasting, the whole duck was placed on a platter and wheeled out on a cart for our inspection. After we assented the beaming chef took his cart to the back of the room, took out some very sharp knives, and made short work of the carcass, leaving what you see in the photo above. The inedible remains went back to the kitchen, where they made a special pot of duck soup just for us using the remains of our duck.


Our duck (and duck soup) made us all very happy. It was rush hour when we finished, and the taxi ride back to our hotel took over an hour. Sam and I nodded off in turns. When we made it back, we were both exhausted, and said goodbye to Johnsson until the next morning, which I'll get to later.