Beijing - Part 2

The forbidden palace was next on my list of must see in Beijing and it didn't let me down. It was forbidden to enter, closed due to an extensive Chinese fireworks display that went all wrong when Mr Choi threw his cuban in the rubbish. Seriously though, this place has been burnt down about 15 times and then rebuilt all over again. What blew me away was the scale of the place, I mean it really is a city. I spent the first hour wandering around with a map, which was actually pretty good because I got away from the main tourist trails and found some cool little palaces and things that most guided tours never see. There are also a bunch of museums with all kinds of artefacts, jewellery, pots, and stuff from the last 4000 years on display. The gardens are also cool and when I eventually bothered getting a map I realised just how huge this thing is. You could easily spend days figuring our everything in the whole city. There are certain places where you have to fight the tourists to see anything and other places where its so empty you feel like you could be the emperor.

But, time waits for no man so I was off to the temple of heaven. Now this is supposedly where the emperor went to pray before the important harvest ceremonies and so forth. Then at the temple, they complete the ceremony, sacrificed the goat and all got smashed. One of the more interesting parts of the complex is this part where groups of people gather and perform a variety of local Chinese cultural things. There were people dancing, singing (very well) old chinese songs, and participating in a wide variety of other wholesome activities. Plus they also hassled tourists to buy stuff, but that's only to be expected.

So what could possibly top a fireworks explosion at the imperial palace, well not much actually. My last day in china was spent at the summer palace, used as a resting place on those hot summer days when the forbidden city was too rat filled to be fun. Largely destroyed at least 15 times, and most significantly during the opium wars, the summer palace is where emperors and empresses went to let their hair down. The complex includes a theatre with three different stages on top of each other where three different plays would run at once. That way the emperor wouldn't get bored and could pick and choose what to watch at any given moment. Part of my final day was the opportunity to blow a few hundred yaun on some exciting food. This fine dish showed a remarkable amount of restraint by containing 50% chilli, 30% garlic, 15% peppercorns and 5% chicken and assorted vegetables. It was quite tasty, but I think my mouth had gone numb after the first mouthful. Washing the chilli down with a walk around the lake, I soon stumbled upon a marble boat, that appears to float, but obviously doesn't and the longest painted corridor in the world. Yes, its long and its painted.

The end of my brief tour was a quick stop at the chilli farm for some more chillies. No, not really it was to the top of the summer palace for a view back across the lake towards Beijing. You may have gathered that I was more positive about Beijing than Shanghai. I dunno whether it was just the olympics or what but I definitely preferred the vibe of Beijing. The monuments are a bit more impressive and overall it just felt like my kinda town.

So that was it for my whistlestop tour of mainland China. All I had left was my dignity, a fake watch, some cheap ties and a sense that all was not necessarily well in the world. But that might've just been the chilli.