DPRK: Prelude in Beijing (The Forbidden City)

Back outside, in that smoggy atmosphere, we headed north towards the Gate of Heavenly Peace, the southern entrance to the Forbidden City. As we queued to go in we were entertained by the bizarre callisthenics of the Chinese Army guard. These exercises seemed to consist of some weird oriental mix of running, marching, wrestling and barn dancing. They were an odd but momentary distraction, all but forgotten as we entered the Forbidden City itself.

For those who haven’t been there then I can do no better than recommend that you hire a DVD of the Last Emperor, which was filmed there. It is far more than just a palace being, as the name indicates, a city within a city. It was the residence of the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties from 1420 to 1912 and contains almost a thousand buildings with over eight thousand rooms. Now it’s a World Heritage site with many thousands of visitors, both Chinese and foreign, every day.
I wandered around taking pictures and looking at a couple of the museums that are contained inside – the museum containing the various jade sculptures was particularly fine.
I noticed, as I had done the last time, a rather odd phenomenon. To describe it you need to picture the layout of the City. It is more or less symmetrical about a North-South line. The main palaces within are set at the ends of a series of courtyards in such a way that you can proceed from one to the next through the courtyards by following a central line. They have names like the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Complete Harmony, the Hall of Preserving Harmony and the Palace of Earthly Peace.

Off to the sides things become slightly more labyrinthine, though no less interesting, with smaller buildings on smaller courtyards and paths. Some of these buildings have been pressed in to service as the museums. The odd phenomenon is that almost all, certainly over ninety per cent, of the visitors choose to follow the central route so that if you do the same things are crowded and at the entrances to the various palaces there are people six or seven deep taking pictures over each other’s heads. If on the other hand you wander off to the sides there is almost no one. You see a few visitors once you enter the museums but otherwise things are calm, peaceful, beautiful and devoid of crowds.
So, after seeing a couple of palaces, that’s what I did, following the eastern side of the complex through the museums until eventually I came to the end and turned left again to lead me to the Northern Gate, the Gate of Divine Prowess, where we were to meet up again with our guides before going our own separate ways for the afternoon.

It is, as my pictures show, a remarkably photogenic place.