Beijing's Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square

Forbidden City in Beijing

For our last full day in China we planned visits to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We had a quick breakfast in the dining room at the Ritz Carlton then boarded the bus at 8:30. Our plans are subject to change a bit since the national holiday begins on October 1. The Chinese “Golden Week” beginning October 1 celebrates that day in 1949 when the People’s Republic of China October 1st 1949 was founded.  It is much like the Independence Day (July 4) celebrations in the US.  It turns out that Tiananmen Square is being prepared this morning and is closed to the public. That caused us to make a change and do our visit to the Forbidden City first.

In the Forbidden City

Patrick took our entry tickets to the gate for us and we walked through the area where the Emperor and high officials resided. Construction of the Forbidden City complex took place in from 1406 to 1420 and was the Imperial residence until the early 20th Century. It was called Forbidden City because common people could not enter the area. It was limited to the imperial family and employees.

There were 9999 rooms in the residence which is important because the number 9 is very lucky in China. Also, the emperor stayed in a different room every night to avoid assassination attempts. Emperors had multiple wives and many concubines who needed space as well.

Forbidden City

We saw large copper and iron pots that would store water in case of fire. In winter there would be warming fires under the pots to prevent freezing. The floor of the entire complex was covered with 30 layers of stones in alternating directions. This was to prevent threats from tunneling into the Forbidden City.

The area was very crowded since many Chinese citizens are off work in preparation for the upcoming Golden Week national holiday celebrations. We toured many of the buildings and took many photos before boarding the bus for lunch.

Brass pot in the Forbidden City

We were very happy to have a beautiful autumn day. There was abundant sunshine and temperatures in the mid 70s. A light breeze kept us very comfortable. We have always heard about the terrible smog in Beijing but we saw none of that in our three days in the city. I am certain there are days with temperature inversions or other factors that add to the pollution problem but we had great luck from the weather during our stay in Beijing.

Lunch was one of the best of our trip. At a local restaurant we had another lazy Susan family style lunch but had some unique selections with different seasonings or preparations than we have had. There was curry baked fish and very good Kung Pao chicken. Of course there was course after course of vegetables, noodles and rice.  Everyone enjoyed the meal.

Cindy & Mary across from Tiananmen Square

After lunch we took the bus to Tiananmen Square but it was still closed by the government to prepare for the national holiday week. We still had to pass through security just to walk across the street from the square. We saw the building where Chairman Mao’s body still lies in state. We walked past the major courtyards and the China Museum. There was significant police and military presence since major political figures will be in the area throughout the coming week. We learned that Tiananmen means "gate of heavenly peace."  It was built during the Ming Dynasty as a major gate leading to the Forbidden City.

We didn’t spend a great deal of time at Tiananmen Square and headed back to the Beijing Ritz Carlton. We got back around 3 pm then decided to take a walk around the city. We walked east from the hotel in the financial district through residential neighborhoods.

Tiananmen Square

Around 4:30 we decided to start back toward the hotel. We needed to meet Patrick at 5:15 to give him our evaluation and gratuity. We also needed to pick up our passports from him in preparation for our departure. On our way back to the hotel we walked through another Hutong that looked a little higher end than the one we visited a few days ago. Patrick had told us that some Hutong apartments have higher rent than newer condos further from the city center. Their location near the city center in Beijing can make a Hutong dwelling very desirable.

We got back to our room in plenty of time to get Patrick’s tip and our evaluation down to him. Since the bulk of the participants were eating early before going to a show on Kung Fu we decided to wait until their bus left before going to dinner to avoid the crowd.

The dining room at the Ritz Carlton was nearly empty when we arrived around 6:45. The buffet had several chicken and shrimp dishes as well as a seafood bar. We had several cooked dishes and a generous serving of fruit. We finished with the prepared desserts. On our way out we chatted briefly with a Keith and Krystal about our experiences traveling in Germany and wished them well on their upcoming trip to Hawaii.

After dinner we went up to the room to pack for our 12:30 departure from the hotel tomorrow afternoon. Our flight is scheduled to depart at 5 pm on Monday evening and will land in Detroit at 5:40 on Monday evening. We will have a short layover in Detroit then hop on a flight scheduled to land in Cincinnati around 9:30 on Monday night. If all goes as planned I will go in to work on Tuesday. After a 13 ½ flight I don’t know how alert I will be at work but I will give it my best effort.

After we finished packing Mary and Cindy started planning our next trips while I looked for something on television. With 50 channels in Chinese and only 3 in English it narrows the choices down a bit.

We plan to turn in early and perhaps get out for a walk around Beijing on Monday morning. It will be interesting to see the city on the national holiday.

Great Wall of China

We boarded the bus at the Beijing Ritz Carlton Financial Street at 7 am for our visit to the Badaling section of the Great Wall. We had gone to breakfast in the hotel dining room at 6 am. This breakfast was much more Western than our previous stays. Although most of the hotels offered eggs of some sort, the breakfast was largely Asian in influence. Here just the opposite was true. Most of the items on the buffet were to US and European tastes with some Chinese choices. We had some of the shrimp dumplings (bao), fresh fruit (melons, dragonfruit, pineapple) and Chinese noodles.

With traffic in Beijing it took nearly 90 minutes to arrive at the location to visit the Great Wall. The highway to access the visitor area is on the major route north from Beijing. That and the upcoming national holiday means that traffic was very heavy even at the time we left the hotel.

Mary at the Great Wall of China

We arrived at the Badaling section of the Great Wall around 8:30 and noticed immediately that the air temperature was much cooler. We were pleased that there didn’t appear to rain clouds in the sky but there was a slight breeze so we all took jackets. Patrick gave us tickets for the funicular rail up the mountain and we went up the incline. At an altitude of over 6000 feet we could feel a much cooler air temperature. The major issue was the wind. The howling wind made the air seem very much cooler. We were all bundled up to keep the wind from freezing us.

Our group at the Great Wall of China

We walked down the Great Wall in the steeper direction until we came to a section that we thought was too steep. Since we liked the view from that spot we decided to take a few snapshots then walk the other direction. We turned around and started walking the other way passing the point where we started. As we approached the end point for this section of wall several in our group told us that a Chinese couple was fighting up on the wall. As we approached we saw a Chinese lady really smacking a man around. He was making little attempt to defend himself. He was scratched and red from her smacks and scratches. Someone eventually got security to separate the two.

We took a number of snapshots of the wall and surrounding countryside then walked back to the interpretative trail just below the Great Wall. There was some signage indicating the UNESCO World Heritage Site status but there really wasn’t enough information that either of us would consider it an interpretative trail. We stayed bundled up as much as possible in the strong wind then made our way down the mountain on the funicular rail around 10:30.

Great Wall of China

We took the bus for a 40 minute ride to a company that makes jade, jadeite and nephrite carvings and jewelry. A speaker talked to us about the three materials and what each was best suited for. She also taught us how to recognize genuine materials from reproductions and how to determine one grade of jade from another. She discussed the art of carving jade and the various shapes of jade carvings and what each shape symbolizes. After a quick walk around the store we went upstairs to lunch which was the common family style lunch. Most items on the table were familiar from previous meals but we thought it was good. We went back to the sales area after lunch and bought some jade jewelry items for family and friends.

Statue of a Ming general along the Sacred Way

We finished our day by going to the Ming tombs which is the area where the emperors from the Ming Dynasty are buried. We walked along the Sacred Way admiring the stone statuary from the 1300s depicting generals, warriors and animals. Since the day was beautiful and sunny we enjoyed the walk. We took a lot of photos of some of the more interesting statues. On the way back to our hotel our bus passed by many of the sites from the 2008 Olympic Games. We got back to the Beijing Ritz Carlton in the Financial District around 4:30 to rest after our travels.

We elected to not have the optional Peking duck dinner with the group.  Instead we went into town with a group of about 30 from the group who made the same decision. We had eaten duck on several occasions over the past few weeks, and we just wanted a more low key evening. Because our guide, Patrick, took the 30 or so visitors to the duck dinner we got in David’s bus to ride into the restaurant.

Our bus let us off in an area of inner city Beijing where a lot of small shops and restaurants catering to local residents are located. We walked down an alley (Hutong) to the entrance of the small restaurant. We were in a room with the four of us as well as Keith and Krystal from Greenville, SC. We enjoyed chatting with Keith about some of their recent travels to Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean and the Yucatán. Krystal shared her enthusiasm for essential oils with us. Because she has a very limited diet she was unable to eat any of the plated dinners we were served but planned to eat some of the snacks in the hotel bar after we returned. The name of the restaurant cracked us up, Grandmas Kitchen! It was obviously for local Chinese despite the name.

The restaurant staff did not speak any English but David did a great job of communicating our needs to the waiters and cooks. We had a choice of meat loaf, chicken cordon bleu or a vegetable roll. The meal started with vegetable tomato soup followed by a garden salad with Thousand Island dressing. Everyone in our room had the chicken which was not a typical preparation for chicken cordon bleu but was really quite good. The chicken was pounded thin and stuffed with a mix of chopped ham, cheese and mashed potatoes. It was rolled in a light crumb coating and baked perfectly. There was broccoli and garlic bread on the side. Dessert was a very good slice of apple cake. We enjoyed our meal and chat with Keith and Krystal very much.

We returned to the Ritz Carlton after dinner. Mary and Cindy played cribbage while Mark and I read. We turned in early since had a busy day planned for tomorrow in Beijing.

Hutongs of Beijing

We awoke early for our departure from Xi’an. Like Lijiang, we enjoyed this city and left reluctantly for Beijing. We had put our checked bags out the night before so it did not take long to check out of the Wyndham Grand Xi’an South. We boarded the bus to the airport where we would fly to Beijing. The flight was delayed nearly an hour so we ate the boxed lunch packed for us by the Tang Café at the Wyndham. There was a club sandwich, fruit and dried peas that are very popular in China. Once we took off the flight was rough but uneventful getting us to Beijing by about 2 pm. Porters collected our checked bags for delivery to the Beijing Ritz Carlton Financial Street where we would be spending the next three nights.

Rickshaw ride through Hutongs of Beijing

From the airport we took the bus directly to inner city Beijing where we took a ride in a rickshaw or petite-taxi. These bicycles are outfitted with two wheels and a covered cab behind the driver. We rode the rickshaws through the Hutongs of Beijing. A Hutong is basically a community on a city alley. The word Hutong is Mongolian that translates literally to well since these collections of homes originally formed around a shared water well.  These are collections of homes of working class people. Each home is typically composed of 3-4 buildings surrounding a small courtyard. These buildings may house an extended family. The government typically owns that buildings and charges rent to residents. Many homes in the hutongs now have running water. However, there are community toilets that serve a number of homes along the narrow streets.

The rickshaw took us to a home of a single retired lady who has lived in her home in the hutong her entire life. Her parents lived in the hutong at one time but she now shares the space with her sister and niece. She served tea to us and told us a lot about daily life in the hutong. She began hosting tours of her tiny home in 2008 during the Beijing Olympics. At that time Leonardo DeCaprio and Michael Phelps visited her home.

Mary with glass balls that were painted on the inside

She introduced her niece who is an accomplished artist who has been featured in recent local magazines. Her specialty is painting on the inside of bottles. She uses specially angled tiny paint brushes to paint scenes and Chinese characters into the glass bottles. We bought ornaments that were hand painted on the inside of the glass from the artist. We will give these to Sarah and Emily’s families as gifts from our trip.

Historic Ming Bell Tower

We reboarded the rickshaws to go to Beijing’s bell tower where a bell was rung at 5 am when the city gates were opened. Another nearby tower beat at drum at 7 pm when the gates were closed. By the time we arrived at the tower there was a heavy rain so we were happy to go inside to escape the weather. The bell tower is an interesting and attractive building that was constructed in the 1200s during the reign of Kublai Kahn. 

In bell tower we were treated to a tea tasting. Our host gave us small cups of a variety of oolong, pu-er, green and fruit teas. The hostess spoke English fairly well and had a good sense of humor. She shared what Chinese folk medicine holds that each type of tea does for the body. We smelled each of the dried tea leaves and tasted each of them as brewed teas.

Sampling tea at a tea room in the Ming Bell Tower

Our bus picked us up outside the bell tower and took us to dinner then to the Beijing Ritz Carlton. This five star hotel is very elegant but a bit dated. Our 12th floor rooms were clean, comfortable and quiet which is everything we expect in a hotel. The bathroom wasn’t as fully appointed as the ones in some of our previous stays but was still extremely nice.