Tiananmen and The Forbidden City

The morning we departed Beijing for Xi'an, we visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Even with a police escort, the one block drive took 20 minutes. Everyone in China wants a car. No one can own land, everyone lives in condos or apartments, so the Chinese dream is to own a car. There are 2,000 additional cars on the streets of Beijing everyday.

Tiananmen Square was packed with people queued up to see Mao's body. Mao's glass coffin is raised everyday so people can walk past and pay their respect. After circling the square, we fought, honked and made our way to the Forbidden City. This will be one of the postings where I use more pictures and fewer words.



One of the gates in the walled Forbidden City



A bronze lion guarding the entrance. There are always two, a male and female. This is the female, she has her left paw on a cub. The male has his right paw on a ball that represents the world.



A dragon turtle incense burner. There were many incense burners. Large, ornate barrel size burners in between the staircases to create a cloud like effect and animal shaped; cranes, hares, turtles, on terraces.



One of my favorite details are the mythical animal carvings on the eaves of the roofs. You can tell the status of the individual by the number of animals. It is always an odd number; 1, 3, 5...up to 13. This is 13 and represents the emperors residence. The Forbidden City is divided between the political buildings, scholars and generals, and the emperor's residence. The residence contains 9,999 rooms. Many of the emperors had as many as 3,000 concubines and 5,000 eunuchs living in the residence. The emperor was the only un-castrated male in the residence.



Here's another with 7 characters. The lead image in both of these is a man riding a Phoenix.



These are the rooms reserved for concubines. You can see this one rated three protectors on her eaves.

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Location:En-route Tanzania