The flight to Beijing was uneventful. There were a couple of very cute kids on the flight. There was one little girl that had squeaky shoes and didn’t want to stop walking and squeaking the whole time. We thought twice about getting squeaky shoes for our boys because it can get very annoying especially when trying to sleep.
We were met by our Beijing guide, Zhu Li (Julie), at the airport. She looked about 12 but is actually in her late twenties with a 16 month old girl named Grace. We arrived at the Beijing Peace Hotel around noon and Julie got us all checked in and got our rooms upgraded (thankfully). We all went to our rooms and showered and met her at 1:15 for our afternoon tour.
The afternoon tour was of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Our first stop was lunch at the National Museum where the majority of the customers were Western. They served us an abundance of food which we needed to rejuvenated ourselves after 29 hours of airplane food. (Funny thing – no fortune cookies at the end of the meal, only watermelon)
After lunch, we walked across the street to Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square is named for the Tiananmen gate which is the south entrance to the Forbidden City. The day was overcast but didn’t take away from the awesome sight of the square and the Forbidden city gate.
The Chinese congress building encompasses the equivalent of 4-5 square blocks and occupies the west side of the square. On the south side of the square is Mao’s Mausoleum. In the center of the square is a monument to War Heroes.
Then, on to the Forbidden City! We entered the Forbidden City thru the Tiananmen Gate which is under a portrait of Mao. This portrait is cleaned every year for the anniversary of the start of PR China (October 1, 1949) and a new portrait is painted every 3 years.
Its hard to describe the Forbidden City with anything other than ‘Awe Inspiring’. The city contains many buildings used for different purposes from living quarters for military, concubines, emperor and family and holding council. Many of the buildings are being restored and complete restoration of every building is scheduled for 2010. Each of the buildings has statues of crouching figures on the roof tops. The number of crouching figures indicates the importance of the building. The throne room had 9 crouching figures which is the highest importance.
After the Forbidden City, we had a complete and total meltdown. We went back to the hotel and arranged to meet Julie for our next tour. We went to bed around 7:00 without any dinner and slept thru the night.