China - Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City

Here is a first of a series of posts and pictures on my trip to China. I'll start with Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City.

First off Tiananmen Square. Tiananmen Square is called the political heart of China. There people can visit the tomb of Mao as well as view symbols of happy Communism.

Here is part of the line to view the Tomb of Mao. This thing took up the entirety of the square and people wait in line for like five six hours or something to walk by the tomb for ten seconds. Crazy.

Just outside of Tiananmen Square is the entrance to the Forbidden City, with a nice portrait of Mao right outside of it.



The Forbidden City was massive having 999 rooms containing many building courtyards and even small streams inside of the city. Rumor has it the Emperor who had the place build was so scared of people tunneling under the walls, he made the ground have 30 feet of brick. Amazing what you can do with an unlimited supply of slave labor!

My favorite part of the Forbidden City was definently the gardens. There were rock gardens, gazebos and trees there. Keep in mind this place was the home of over 1000 concubines that were more or less imprisoned in the forbidden city. I imagine these gardens was where they would spend most of their time. They were nice, but I wouldn't want to live my life there.....

So, there are no hills or mountains in or around Beijing. This one here was built by said slave labor. Turns out if you dig up thirty feet of ground to lay brick, you are left with an excess of dirt. Excess of dirt can become small mountains/tall hills. All this to satisfy Feng Shui which teaches that you need a mountain on the West end I believe. Anyways the whole of the Forbidden City is meant to be the masterpiece of Feng Shui, and everything is meant to allow for the flow of chi.

Anyways this is the end of my first post. Above is the picture of the group of us from Potomac Kempo that went. All of us minus Sensei Santillo who is behind the camera.

I'll try to put out as many posts as I can. These take a long time to write, as I have hundreds of pictures. I hope you like them!