Beijing-The Forbidden City 22.08.12

Typical me I woke up at 6am plugged in my laptop lay back down and slept in :/ Woken again by a 9:15am wake up call saying where are you? Luckily I had packed up all my things the night before and quickly changed while Aimee came up and helped me collect my things. We checked our bags in at reception and headed out for a full day of exploring. Boarding the dreaded Metro to Tiananmen Square where we found half of China's population we squeezed on and held onto whatever was closest be it person or object. When we arrived the square was filled with Chinese tourists we only visited the square itself for a few minutes and then continued across the way to the Forbidden City....where the other half of the Chinese population was. I'm not even half joking this place was filled to the brim with 1000's of Chinese tourists and not the polite kind there was pushing and shoving and forcing of children in front to find a good reason to push forward, all of which to see the rather unimpressive emperors throne room. There was less shoving involved for the empress's throne room however when we left that area just standing around talking as usual someone would take a sneaky photo of us like we were the attraction, less surprising was one mother's sly attempt to get her son in a photo with us. This poor boy had no idea what was going on and neither did we, she grabbed him and pushed him in front of us, took her photo and then he finally got to turn around and see what the heck he was supposed to be smiling for....he looked terrified and confused and made  hasty retreat to catch up with his mum.
The size of the Forbidden city is something that cannot be described, you honestly have to see it for yourself, it was beautiful though, the amount of thought and dedication that went into creating this royal retreat was breathtaking right down to the last corner stone of the buildings and roof detailing. This place was certainly built to almost rival the gods which is what was intended for, to be just one step down from the gods in beauty and majesty.
The colours.....green, red, blue, yellow and gold, amazing. I absolutely love every photo I took in the forbidden city for that reason, eye popping colours and every building had something different about it. Snow told us about the past emperors and their many concubines, one had 3000 or more concubines and in his lifetime maybe saw 5 of them. The reason for having so many of them was just because he could, to show how powerful he was. The other 2995 concubines once chosen could never leave the Forbidden City and in their lifetimes some never actually knew who the emperor was or what he looked like, they lived together in rooms of 2 or 3 and never saw their families again. The Dragon Lady who chose the concubines at one time was in complete control of the youngest emperors who were 5 and 3 years old. Each one during their time of ruling were told what they could and could not do and who their empress would be, usually one of 5 concubines the Dragon Lady would choose however even though she told them they could pick which one when they selected one and walked towards the girl of their choosing the Dragon Lady would cough and the emperor would choose another girl until the Dragon Lady was silent upon choosing her.

We continued right through the city until we reached the imperial garden where there was a beautiful man made mountain. This mountain looked towards the actual mountains surrounding Beijing and as they could never visit them represented a place for the concubines to visit and think of their homes and families which they would never see.
After that we found a little place to have lunch and visited the old Beijing, original streets and buildings maybe 400 years old which was amazing and had a nice little shop around, and found a lovely little tea shop where we stopped and had some beautiful lychee black tea and green tea which was really nice. We bought some of the black tea for our train trip in the next few days.

We bought a few bits and pieces for the train trip to Hohhot that night and grabbed a quick bite before we headed to the station. We met three beautiful little girls in the waiting room of the station who were from Hohhot and spoke such good english, they had an Australian teacher in Hohhot. One of them had run up and said, "where you from?", their names were Mary, Annie and Betty and they were so sweet they spoke with us for about an hour and took photos. I gave them a little Koala each which they loved and they ran off and came back with a little squishy orange pig thing that stuck to walls and ceilings. It was so nice of them, they even came and found us after we boarded the train and had some chips with Bec and Aimee before heading back to sleep for the morning arrival into Hohhot.