The Forbidden City

Today was an optional tour to Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is the largest urban square in the world. It can hold up to a million people. Our tour guide, Forest, provided us with lots of information about the buildings surrounding the square. Tom was expecting to see a much bigger military presence in the square and in Beijing in general, and was surprised he didn’t sense more. Forest showed us that the government building in the square is on the 100 yuan bill, so Tom tried to take a picture of the bill with the building (Forest’s idea). While he was taking the photo I noticed a couple of Chinese people watching him and then copying what he was doing. One lady took a picture of Tom taking a picture of the dollar bill and building. We weren’t quick enough to take a picture of the lady who was taking a picture of Tom taking a picture of the building.

From the square we moved on to the Forbidden City which was across the street. The Forbidden City is the world’s largest palace complex. It contains 9,999 rooms and was the palace that emperors lived 700 years ago. Forest guided us through multiple buildings and provided us with the history of the dynasties and emperors who lived there. He told stories of how being an emperor might not be so great because they were not allowed to leave the city and how relatives may want to kill them so they can take his power. There were several buildings that you could look in the glass window to see what it looked like inside but it would be crowded with many people. The Chinese people don’t have a sense of personal space and just shove past you like it’s no big deal. They aren’t being malicious, that’s just part of their culture.

The Forbidden City is a very popular tourist place and the government only sells 80,000 tickets a day and they sell out every day before noon. So this of course meant that it was very busy with lots of tourists. It would be very easy to get separated from the group. Forest always told us how much time we had to look around and take pictures and where we would meet next. Two sets of people from our group got separated at different points of the tour, but both times they somehow found us several different stops later. Forest was amazed that somehow they both had rejoined the group. I’m just glad that we never got separated.

It was a very hot day and the tour went a little longer than Forest had anticipated (we also started a half hour late because his associated did not buy our tickets the day before as he thought they would and he had to run ahead to get our tickets before they sold out). We walked out of the Forbidden City through the imperial gardens. It was too bad that we were rushed at this point because it looked like a very pretty area that I would have liked to explore more.

The last stop on the tour was to climb a bunch of steps (the people who had completed the marathon the day before were not too excited to see more steps) to see a birds eye view of the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was built is such a way that from the view above all you can see is the roofs of the buildings and not the people. We also got very good (well with the smog and all) 360 degree views of Beijing.

The tour ended about 3:15pm and we hadn’t had lunch and were going to be headed to the Marathon gala dinner in a few hours. Thankfully we had 3 pieces of pizza left over from the night before, so Tom, Leah, and I each had piece of pizza, some chips, Red Vines, and Oreos for a light lunch. I do have to say that China does offer some very different flavors of potato chips and Oreos here that I have not seen in the States. Some examples of Lays potato chip flavors (no I did not try them all): Seaweed, Cucumber, Tomato, Cumin Lamb, Fried Squid, Lime, Finger Licking Braised Pulled Pork, and some other flavors. I also tried Raspberry/Blueberry Oreos. They weren’t too bad.

Leah and I had just enough time to walk to the New World Department Store that was about a 15 minute walk from our hotel to look for laundry detergent. The tour company had told us before we left on the trip that the hotels have laundry services relatively inexpensive, but when we looked at the price list we did not quite agree. Forest said he could take us to a place on his scooter, but they still charge by the item. Myself and a couple of other people were thinking he was going to find us a laundromat where we could do our own laundry, but he said that was not very common in China. So Leah and I went on the hunt for detergent to wash the necessities in our sinks. The department store has a grocery store in the basement level and we found detergent right away and hustled back to the hotel so we could take showers and get ready for the gala dinner.

The gala dinner was held at the convention center for all runners. We were seated at tables of 12 and served a buffet dinner with many different types of foods. There was a slide show from the race and some video clips. The race organizers announced how many people from each country had participated. The announcer sounded almost disappointed/lackluster when he said “And once again in first place, the United States with 500 some (I can’t remember the exact number).” I also felt like it was infomercial time when the company showed a clip of their other sponsored adventure marathon races.

The dinner ended at 9:30 and for those who chose, they could go to an after party at another location or head back to the hotel. We decided to head back to the hotel and have our own little after party in the hotel bar. Myself, Tom, Leah, Fernando, Lauren, Miguel, Gail, Becky, Phil, and Jeff had a good time hanging out. Jeff was the last to join the group and was seated in a chair that was separate from the couches we were sitting on. Throughout the evening we were discussing what we had learned on the tours and somehow I think Tom name Jeff the Taco Emperor. I don’t think I caught how it started, but it stuck. At midnight we were ready to call it at a night and I think the staff was ready to go home.