We spent our second day in Beijing exploring the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. We started our tour heading north from our hotel toward Jing Shan Park, which we read has a nice view of the Imperial Palace from its hilltop.
This picture is taken from the outside of the Forbidden City on the way to the park. The frozen water you see is called the Golden Water and it flows from west to east in a course designed to resemble the jade belt worn by officials.
Once we arrived at Jing Shan, we found many locals enjoying the beautiful weather (it was still cold, but very sunny for Beijing). These are a few pics from some of the activities we observed, such as a group of men playing hacky sack, a woman practicing her Tai Chi, and several people playing cards. We’ve come to realize morning exercise/activity is a part of life in China.
From there we walked up several steps to reach the hilltop and capture the view of the Forbidden City, where the emperors lived. You can’t really tell from the pictures, but it’s a massive development.
After we made our way back down the steps we made one last stop to see where emperor Chongzhen, the last emperor of the Ming dynasty, hanged himself. According to the plaque, in 1644 a peasant uprising, led by Li Zicheng, broke into the city of Beijing. The Emperor was so horrified he fled the Forbidden City and ran to JingShan Park where he wrote an apology and then had his attendant help him commit suicide. Depressing, huh?
The following pics are from our hours spent inside the Forbidden City.
After we wandered around “inside the gates,” we made our way over to Tiananmen Square, where you can find Mao’s Mausoleum and China’s National Museum. It was interesting to see the difference in architecture from the dynasty years and that of the communist years.
Mao’s Mausoleum.
Monument to the People’s Heroes
Chairman Mao.
We were pretty tired after two days of non-stop touring, so after Tiananmen Square we decided to head back to the hotel for a quick nap. For dinner we went to a restaurant in a really cool hotel called The Opposite House, but the pics came out too dark to see anything. Bummer! Hopefully, we’ll make it back at some point and can take some better pictures.
Generally, we had a great trip to Shijiazhuang and Beijing, but we were ready to get back “home” to Shanghai.
Tags: Beijing, Chairman Mao, Forbidden City, Jing Shan Park, Tai Chi, Tiananmen Square
Seeing your pictures makes me want to do the China trip all over again. It has been 25+ years since Cynthia and I were there with your (Ashley) grandparents.