After we went to the Great Wall we went to the Olympic Village. Which was so awesome I can't bring myself to make fun of it. Although it did look taller on TV. Seeing the bird's nest and the water cube was probably the highlight of the whole trip. I definitely recommend that everyone go there as long as someone else is paying for your travel.
The Forbidden City and Bangalore are a different story and will not fare so well on my blog. Let's start with The Forbidden City. They call it that because men are forbidden to enter unless they are either castrated or have the patience to wait in line and buy a ticket. Even though the lines can be quite long, tickets are still the way to go, but back in the day the men were castrated to protect the bloodline of the emperor. I also heard they had a lot combines around but I didn't see any (didn't see any crops either). The city was home to the emperors of the Ming, Ping and Pong dynasties dating back to 1410 where they carried out all of their imperial duties and hung out with the Eunuchs and Combines. Once you go through the main gate you are greeted by a big courtyard surrounded by big ornate buildings with sloping roofs. There are also lots of tour groups wearing matching hats and following someone carrying a flag.
Someone made a bet with me to try and get someone to say "Go Texas" or something similar on video and the most fun I had there was goofing with the tour groups.
Once you cross the courtyard you can walk up to a big building and if you want, fight your way through the tour groups and look in the window. You can't go inside because it is forbidden. As far as I could tell each of these rooms has approximately 3 vases and 2 chairs and based upon the number of people trying to look inside they are of extraordinary cultural significance. Or maybe everyone else was doing what I was which was thinking that there must be something really cool in that room because there are 200 people trying look inside, but then you make your way to the window its just more vases and chairs. There are about 900 rooms like this with names like "The Hall of Glorious Harmony" and "Place of Heavenly Purity" or my favorite, "The Hall of Mental Cultivation". What was hard to find was "The hall of the heavenly toilet" or the "divine place to sit down for a minute".
I'm sure there was some fascinating history and culture there, but I missed it. I did find the Imperial gift shop where the Emperor bought his T-shirts and Yao Ming snow globes.
Across from the Forbidden City is Tiannenmen Square, where the big student uprising in the 80's took place and the iconic photo of the person standing defiantly in front of the tank was taken. There weren't any tanks there, but you can rest assured that security is still very tight. We ran across this officer standing guard to quell any unauthorized protests.
But it was very cool to stand there and take in the sights. We also had the bizarre experience of having people want to have their phot taken with us. It probably happened 6 or 7 times, where Chinese people (most likely rural) wanted a picture with one of us.
We also got our photo taken with the world famous Peking Duck!
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