Dan and I arrived in Beijing, China late afternoon on Sunday.
Transit was perfect: uneventful. Prof. Ben Koo from Tsinghua University, the organizer of the
SSET conference, met us at the airport and helped us check into
our hotel. One sure sign of entering another country is the
change in driving habits and lack of seatbelts. We were eager to see some sights even though we were
loopy with jet lag. Ben took us to the Hou Hai area for dinner.
We were presented with quite a spread including many types of
meats. Dan tried the snail, but I wouldn't go near it. Hou Hai is one of the longest stretches of bars and restaurants
in the world and it lines up all along a lake. We also walked
through some of the back alleys and saw how many of the workers
in the city live today. It did not occur to our tired minds to
start taking pictures until after dinner, but we certainly made
up for that during the rest of our trip! |
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For our first outing on Monday we decided to
start at the heart of Beijing: the Forbidden City. This is where
the emperors used to live. It covers a vast area and stands as
an ancient city within the metropolis of Beijing. As we entered
the first structure, or "gate," we came into a huge courtyard
with stone bridges leading to another gate. This pattern
continued not only in the Forbidden City, but in nearly every
ancient site that we visited. |
| There were so many people visiting. Often we
found ourselves smooched in the middle of a mob of tourists all
trying to snap a picture of some throne or bed inside a room.
The picture of Dan above in the courtyard shows the scale of
these buildings. The statue of the lion guards the main
gate (note the cub under its front paw signifying that this is a
female lion). We saw many lion statues all over the city. (Keep
a look out for just a few of our lion pictures in this web
site.) |
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One way that we escaped from the mobs of people was to buy a ticket
to the
Clocks and Watches exhibit. This is a vast collection and most are
ornate golden sculptures with a tiny clock inserted somewhere, as in
this astronomy example.
We saw several collections in the Forbidden City including ceramic,
calligraphy, and souvenirs...for the modern collector.
| A delightful element to the Forbidden City is
the garden. There are flowers, trees, pavilions, and sculptures.
Some sculptures were simply an interesting rock or piece of wood
placed on a pedestal. We wished we had discovered this area a
bit sooner and decided to take an ice cream break. Later we
traversed the many side buildings that had their own displays
and interesting structures. The Forbidden City is a "must see"
within Beijing. Many other ancient structures are modeled after
what is here, so it is certainly a good place to start. |
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Continue to Bei Hai Park
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