Beijing Impressions, Day 4

So today, the Forbidden City. And do mean all day; I probably spent almost eight hours there. My feet feel like hamburger right now.

Anyway, the place is beyond big. It's stupidly big. Offensively big. Depressingly big, even. I kinda wanted to burn it down just for having the audacity to exist. And only half it is even accessable! The rest is, forgive the pun, still forbidden.

It probably didn't help that I went early and worked back to front: I was absolutely alone for quite a while, which was creepy in one of the world's busiest tourist attractions. Empty courtyard after empty courtyard, bordered by locked room after locked room. Look in the windows and you see forgotten relics, fading in the sun and gathering dust. It just goes on and on and on, to the point where it's just sad more than anything.

For the geeks, let me help you triangulate the Forbidden City: The dungeons from the original Legend of Zelda. The castle from Ico. The first half-hour of Labyrinth. And the final area of the Mulan level from Kingdom Hearts II. Mix them together, scale up to life size, and there you go.

What did I like? Well, they had some little sub-museums, one of which housed a large collection of clocks, both Chinese-made and from around the world. Some of them even still worked! Though, a curiousity: why were all of the Chinese-made clocks still labeled with Roman numerals, even though they were made for an imperial audience?

Promising development: the bathrooms had both squat and Western-style toilets, with each stall clearly labeled. Very nice. Less promising development: the chunk of bone still attached to a piece of my beef at lunch. Ugh.

Random musing: right now, Beijing is probably the most cosmopolitan city on earth. I mean, I'm pretty sure I've run into fans (or athletes) from pretty much every country I've ever heard of, and quite a few I haven't. Not even New York has that kind of turnout.

Make a quick dash through Tiananmen Square, which is... a square. Seriously, it's just a big open plaza between China's main government buildings, where some bad juju went down once upon a time. Nothing much to see, except maybe Chairman Mao. Seriously, he's preserved in a glass coffin, anyone can go in and have a look. It was only in the morning, though, so I missed out. :(

They do mean business: it's the only non-sporting venue I've been to in town where you had to go through a security check just to get in. And I'm pretty sure someone tried to give me a copy of Chairman Mao's Little Red Cookbook.

Random thing that keeps happening to me: a local guy will come up wanting either a picture with me, or more disturbingly, a picture of me with their girlfriend. I... don't get it. Maybe I need to coin some offensive new term for jungle fever in the Asian-on-Anglo context.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. First day like that we've had since I've been here. I think the rain last night must have pulled all the crap out of the air. Too bad the sun made the already bright pavement blinding. I literally had to wander across with my eyes nearly closed.

More to come about the evening...