16th October: Beijing, China
We had an early night and got up bright and early too to try to settle into the time zone change. 6:00 here was equivalent to getting up at 1:00 where we came from in Doha!
Our hotel includes breakfast, for 60p per person. Down we went, with no idea what to expect. The room was full of loud chatter, but there was a table at the back which we stepped confidently over to claim. The buffet was exceptional! 10 hot meat, veg, and noodle dishes; eggs to cook yourself; soups; and various other things we couldn’t identify yet. We plumped for multiple helpings of silken tofu and cucumber; steamed buns; fried dough; melon; and hot soy milk. All of the other guests here seem to be Chinese and, as well as friendly smiles, we were introduced to habits including shaving whilst eating and smoking! Things we’ll have to get used to, amongst many others.
The rush hour metro was fairly busy but, again, people were polite compared to most cities. Lines of bikes in neat rows were lined up outside of the stations, many ready for hire (through scanning on your phone, like everything else). I feel very chilled and comfortable here – despite not speaking the language, it just feels like things are going to work out. Our destination this morning was the Forbidden City, or at least that was the hope. Almost everything you read or hear says that you must but tickets 7 days in advance (or pay an expensive guide), however, we’d heard of a few cases of foreigners recently turning up and being let in. Sure enough, we asked some guards and were pointed to a small queue where we were allowed to buy tickets to join the other 80,000 daily ticket holders to the Palace Museum for today. As is common here, our passports became our tickets. Success!
I was grinning from ear to ear for at least the first hour after we passed through the Meridian Gate into the Forbidden City. I don’t think I really thought we’d ever get here. The vibrant colours on the painted wooden buildings – mainly green, blue, red-brown, and gold – popped in the morning light. The scale of the site gradually sunk in as we passed The Hall of Supreme Harmony, The Hall of Middle Harmony, and The Hall of Preserving Harmony in the first 2 hours. This took us halfway through the middle third of the site!
Most visitors seemed to be in tour groups. Apparently, this is the favourite way to travel for most Chinese domestic tourists. Generally, everyone was tightly packed around the best views but there was a give and friendliness to the crowd. The very few who decided to push were predictably boomers. An open question – are younger Chinese people able to call out / change poor behaviour in older generations given the respect for elders built into Confucianism? I know it’s an issue everywhere, but I feel it’s doubly interesting here as whatever Chinese society manages to become in the next 20 years will likely be the summit of modern human achievement.
We were impressed that we were able to get a really good coffee and, later, lunch from inconspicuous places within the Forbidden City’s walls. Despite the number of visitors, the site does incredibly well to cater for everyone without it taking away from the spectacle. The surprising lack of tall buildings in the ancient centre of Beijing also allows you to appreciate the palace, which was home to 24 emperors between 1420 and 1924, without interruption. I’m struggling to do justice to the scale and beauty of the largest surviving palace complex in the world. Suffice to say, we were still wandering inside its imposing walls 7 hours after arriving and had barely scratched the surface. So many buildings, gardens and the perfectly planned intricate details within each remain for us to see.
As sunset approached on the cloudy afternoon, the light began to fade, and we bade farewell to the palace complex. After two false starts with closed exits and a subsequent 4km detour, we had something else to try. We had also read that with a Palace Museum ticket, you can get into Tiananmen Square on the same day. Otherwise, you need a code sent to a Chinese phone number (which we don’t have). A fair distance from the square, we had to have our passports checked and faces scanned at a police checkpoint. A few hundred metres later, a second checkpoint. This time they told us no, but I asked why and didn’t immediately get told to go away. They couldn’t understand how we’d been to the Forbidden City without a ticket on our phone. We had a chat and eventually, after Kaja showed them the receipt from The Palace Museum, they let us through! After another few hundred metres, a third checkpoint. This time to scan bags (which you also must do at every metro station) and for a pat down search. After checking my lip balm was indeed lip balm, we were finally allowed into the vast square.
Completely by accident, we were in the square for the daily evening flag lowering ceremony. The crowds were already 6 deep along the entire barrier, watched at each end by 5 troops of the People’s Liberation Army. Soon, the roads were closed and a large group of their colleagues marched through the Tiananmen (‘Heavenly Peacemaking’) Gate under the portrait of Mao Zedong. Crossing the road they took on an impeccably timed exaggerated high step, audibly stomping in time, before halting under the giant flag pole. Precisely at sunset (although given the cloud, we’ll take the internet’s word for it), the flag was lowered and taken back with the soldiers.
Before long, we were able to enter the area in front of Mao’s portrait, just as the lights came on for dusk. Across the road, the vast square itself was imposing and the Soviet influence was apparent from the time before the Sin-Soviet split diminished their influence here. The scale and sightlines mirror the Palace, paying homage to history whilst also portraying the power of the Chinese Communist Party at the centre of Chinese life.
