Today we took the metro in the morning to see Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. We had a local guide named Lucy (most of the local guides seem to use a Western name in their work). Tiananmen Square is enormous (I kept thinking about the massacre), and there, at Tiananmen Gate, was the familiar portrait of Mao hanging over the entrance. Tiananmen Gate is where Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic on 1 October 1949. You pass through the gate on your way to the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City (the Chinese call it the ”Palace Museum”) is also enormous, one room after another opened up. Very beautiful. The reason the Forbidden City was so called was that it was off limits to commoners for 500 years. The basic layout was built between 1406 and 1420, but since then the place has been destroyed and rebuilt several times.

After spending a few hours in the Forbidden City we split up. Many of the others were going to the Summer Palace, but I didn’t feel like it. I was still tired, it was 37 degrees Celsius, and it was a one hour trip to the palace. So instead I walked across the road to the Jingshan Park, in which there is a pavilion on the top of a hill (an artificial mound made of earth excavated to create the palace moat) with a great view over the Forbidden City and Beijing in general. It was there that I realised just how large the palace grounds are, as they lie there with their russet roofing against the hazy Beijing sky.

After sitting at the pavilion for quite a long time, just relaxing, admiring the view and writing in my travel diary, I walked back to Tiananmen Square. I couldn’t walk through the Forbidden City without paying an entrance fee, so instead I walked the long way around it. In the forecourt I sat down on the ground beneath a tree and had some lunch (the Chinese seem to sit down on the ground in the strangest places, either directly on the ground or on a newspaper, but they seemed to find it very strange when I did the same, or so it would seem from the stares I received). My plan was then to go to the Mao Mausoleum, but unfortunately I hadn’t been smart enough to check the opening hours, which are pretty limited. So I ended up hanging around the square, looking at flying kites, and talking to two young Chinese students who wanted to practice their English. There are often people in the streets asking if you can speak English, and if you would mind talking to them for a while. This might mean that they want to sell you something, but quite often it is genuine. You also get people pointing at you, whispering and giggling (although why they think it necessary to whisper is beyond me). 

Later I went to have lunch (and shop in the well equipped supermarket) at the air-conditioned Henderson Center, and then I went back to the hotel where I spent some time at the Business Center sending e-mails to friends and family back home. This was my first time using e-mail as a means of communication on one of my trips, I had just got myself a yahoo e-mail address before I left. Very practical!

In the evening we went to Lao She Tea House to listen to Chinese Opera and watch acrobats etc. We considered going to see a show with acrobats only, but that would be more expensive and further to travel, and besides we thought it could be interesting combining different art forms. This turned out to be a mistake (someone had seen acrobatics in Shanghai, which had been totally fantastic). We took the subway back to Tiananmen Square and walked a few minutes from there. On the way a beggar grabbed on to me and refused to let go, it took two people to get me loose. But I saw surprisingly few beggars during my visit. I don’t know if this is because people don’t need to beg, if it is because begging is forbidden or that I just didn’t look in the right places, but it is a fact that I see more beggars in Oslo (where the drug addicts that are too lazy to steal are begging in the streets) in one week than I did during the 3 weeks I visited China. But you do see people around who seem to be living in the streets. These people often have several children by their side. From what I was told it might well be that the children were the reason they live on the streets, if they get more than one child they risk losing jobs and homes. On our way to the tea house I also saw an old man in his pyjamas and a lady with hair rollers in her hair. It seems seeing people wearing their pyjamas on the street is not that uncommon. One other thing you can see is a lot of girls and women with light brown ankle socks. They even wear this with mini-skirts and high-heeled sandals, it looks kind of dreadful. I wonder why they do it? 
 

You had to walk up some stairs to get to the tea house. Both the staircase and the tea house itself was filled with souvenirs and pictures, everything for sale. We were placed at the back of the room, in a separate section. The place was half empty. In ceramic cups with a lid we were served the unavoidable green tee by strict young ladies in red and black uniforms. The cups got constantly refilled. We were also served some mysterious kind of snacks. The entertainment turned out to be not too great, at least to the taste of us poor foreigners. The singing sounded completely false in our ears, we didn’t get the stories and the jokes were wasted on us (no subtitles…). There were some acrobatics, but not nearly enough. But – it was certainly a different experience.

Inside the tea house

The show finished rather early, so I went with Yvonne and Nancy to have some dinner at a restaurant close to the hotel. It is nice walking through the streets at night. The heat that is oppressive during the day, is suddenly just right. The hustle and bustle of the city is especially noticeable around the restaurants and the street stalls. Some restaurants try to tempt potential customers by putting their goods on display (turtles, lobsters, fish etc.) on the sidewalk. There aren’t many street lights, but the street are brightened by neon signs in all colours, with the Chinese characters that still seem so exotic to me.