Showing posts with label Tiananmen Square. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tiananmen Square. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Photos and notes from Beijing's Forbidden City

By Jack Brummet, China Travel Editor 

The Forbidden City紫禁城, literally translated by most as The Purple Forbidden City,  was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located smack dab in the middle of Beijing, and now houses the Palace Museum, who run the place. For almost 500 years, it was the home of emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of China's government. Mao Zedong later lived just on the edge of the city.  The site includes an amazing 780 buildings on about eight million square feet (or, 178 acres!).  According to The Wikipedia, in the fifteen years in the Ming period when then city was under construction, it employed one million workers.  I saw a fraction of it in three hours.  I look forward to going back later this year to explore it further. 




Roof guardians - many of the buildings have these wonderful gargoyle sentries

This painting, from the Ming Dynasty period (mid-1400's) depicts the completed Forbidden City looking just about like it does today.


At the gate to the forbidden city.  In this photo, I am facing Tiananmen Square, just across the way.  Next to the Great Wall, I think this entrance, with the picture of Mao Zedong (who in my youth was still known as Mao Tse Tung), is probably the most photographed image in all of China.

a plan of the Forbidden City from Airphoto International - it only shows the largest structures

There are wonderful images of dragons all around the Forbidden City.


A lion that was carved almost six hundred years ago guards the entrance.  I wonder if these have been restored?  You would think the air pollution in Beijing would make short work of them, but they look like they could have been carved this year.  In Seattle, we have two ancient Egyptian sculptures of camels outside our Asian art museum on Capitol Hill.  About 20 years ago, they brought them inside and put copies outside.  They did the same thing in Florence with massive statue of David.  These lions are tough!

Yeah, I was bad about writing down the names of buildings.  I can only name a few of them.

It's virtually impossible to take a photo without someone (or hundreds) of tourists in it


Most of the interiors are closed off, but you can see in to the throne and sitting rooms

Many of the buildings have these vast bronze cauldrons (some covered in gold leaf) out front.  They were the Ming equivalent of fire hydrants.  They were always kept filled with water in case of fire; in the winter, they would keep fires lit beneath them to keep the water from freezing.  When a fire broke out, presumably some sort of bucket brigade sprung into action.  I'm not sure how effective these were--many  buildings, mostly built in the early 15th century eventually burned down and were reconstructed.



Just when you think you are at the end of the city, you stumble upon a new row of buildings.

This is a 200 ton sculpture that was quarried and carved far away from Beijing.  It was brought to the Forbidden City (presumably by slaves).  We know it was transported on the road in the winter.  They would pour water on the road, and drag the sculpture fifty feet and begin the water/freeze/drag procedure once again.  I wonder how many slaves it took to push 200 tons of rock across the iced roads?




This was just amazing.  It is not sculpted or carved.  It is a pile of gigantic, fantastically shaped rocks that they built a hill from and then topped it with a pagoda.  The Emperor would come here with his wife on special occasions and climb up the hill into the pagoda.
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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Photos and notes from Tiananmen Square, Beijing

By Jack Brummet, China Travel Editor

Tiananmen Square is El Centro of China; the very heart of the country.  The Communist Party began building the square after the 1949 revolution.  It was the parade ground upon which The Party would hold its massive parades of soldiers, tanks, and missiles.  Eventually, it would contain Mao Zedong's tomb, and many other museums, monuments, and memorials.  TS sits squarely in the center of BeijingChina, and is named after the Tiananmen Gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace--a phrase lifted from the I Ching) just across the street to its North, and a few hundred feet south of the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is one of the largest city squares in the world--roughly 100 acres.  It has enormous cultural significance as the site of numerous important events in post-revolution Chinese history.  


Almost every citizen I asked about the square didn't want to talk about what happened there in 1989. They didn't refuse to talk about it, but their answers were always a little muddy and vague.  To us, outside China, the square is known as the focal point of the protests of 1989, the pro-democracy movement which abruptly ended on June 4th, 1989, with a declaration of martial law in Beijing, the iconic images of a tank killing a protester, and the death of several hundred civilians.  It was a sobering visit for me, partly because no one really wants to discuss what happened with an obscure American blog site.  People seem aware of what happened, but no one was willing to open up on how it affected the citizens. In any case, this is one of the most popular tourist sites in China.  There were literally thousands of Chinese tourists the day I visited there, and maybe one or two dozen Europeans and Americans.  


Tiananmen Square is the biggest square I have ever seen (the biggest square I've seen prior to this was El Plaza Mayor in Madrid--a mere 129 by 94 metres).  There are many beautiful and culturally significant features, but for me it was impossible to be there without remembering the savage beatdown the Party put down on its citizens in  1989.  I was utterly unable to determine what the events of June 4th mean to the regular folk in China; I encountered the same reticence every time I asked people about membership in the Communist Party.


This photo captures maybe one third of the vastness of Tiananmen Square.  The building you see
directly in front, behind the red video screen on the right, is Mao Zedong's tomb.

A view of the Great People's Hall


 I didn't verify this, but these two video displays (this is just one--roughly 150 feet wide--may be the biggest have ever seem.  They mostly display scenes from various parts of China and messages for The People.  

The obelisk is a memorial for fallen soldiers.

The leading edge of a sculpture just to the left of Mao Zedong's temple 
(in which the taxidermied Mao Zedong is available for viewing three hours a day).

Another view of the sculpture outside Mao's memorial.  Someone just pointed out to me that they 
thought this sculpture resembled the famous photograph of Americans planting the flag on Iwo Jima. 

Mao Zedong's tomb, which closed at noon, frustrating hundreds of Chinese tourists


The next few shots are of the colorful topiaries on the west side of the square.




The flag

A six hundred year old lion sculpture

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