We landed in Beijing at 7am, met up with our personal guide Laura, and off we went to Tiananmen Square and The Forbidden City! We reached the general area at around 8:00am, fueled up at a KFC nearby and commenced what was going to be a really long walk.

Tiananmen Square is the largest public square in the world. Words cannot describe how immense it is.

Above is one of two ancient city gates that have been preserved – they were part of the city’s defenses. This was the outside of the square.

At one end of the square, directly facing the Tiananmen Gates is the Monument to the People’s Heroes and Mao’s Mausoleum. Our guide Laura told us the queues to the mausoleum is insane and would not be worth it to view what would most likely be a wax figure of Mao Ze Dong rather than his preserved body, so we didn’t end up going.

At one side of the square is the Great Hall of the People, essentially the parliament of the Chinese government. And Marvin is not mocking the way Asian tourists pose – he really does pose like that.

Do you see the lamp posts in the above photo? Every one of them has multiple video cameras silently watching the crowds below. Here’s a closer look.

I wanted to take photos of the stern-looking policemen sprinkled everywhere but decided against it. Heheh. Jokes aside, I would find throughout my China tour that security is taken very seriously at all major tourist sites. Another photo that I decided against taking were the X-Ray machines and metal detectors in the pedestrian tunnel leading to the square. They would become a familiar sight during my stay in China.

There was only one way into The Forbidden City and it was through a 2×2 gate under the serene gaze of Chairman Mao. Once we walked past it, what greeted us was another ginarmous gate.

This is a closer look of the gate, Meridian Gate.

Once you walked past that …

… you see this – The Hall of Supreme Harmony. Awesome? Ch’yeah. Tiring? You betcha! But this is close to the middle point now. Yay!

This is where the Emperor used to sit when he conducts official business.

Here’s another picture to give you an idea of the size of the place. This is the view from the Hall of Supreme Harmony. That gate you see in the distance is the Meridian Gate. Pass that is the Tiananmen Gate (the one with Chairman Mao on it) and beyond that, Tiananmen Square. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

And this is the building in the exact centre of the city called appropriately, the Hall of Central Harmony. It is where the Emperor rests and prepares before he shows his face at the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Sorta like a pit-stop.

Ok fast-forwarding a little (bear in mind, if you are feeling tired reading this, imagine walking through it all) … this is an ornate rock garden formed by fusing together thousands of different pieces of rocks and as if that wasn’t enough, they topped it off with a mini-hall. Just because they could. That’s how they roll.

This is near the end of the palace and we had only walked in a straight-line from the front to the end, straight through the middle. We never explored the side alleys like this one which leads to many other rooms …

To recap, we started at Tiananmen Square at around 8:30am and this was by now around 11:30am. Yup, a very long walk indeed.

I shall end this post with 2 random photos. This is me against the giant doors of the Hall of Supreme Harmony.

And this is a kid with an awesome pose.