Beijing Day 1 - Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City and Hutong Village

Hong Kong University has this thing called "Reading Week" where classes are cancelled for an entire week.  Urban legend has it that students used to stay in their dorms, locked away, studying for impending exams for an entire week... crazy, right?  

So we decided to take our week off by visiting one of the largest cities in the world = Beijing and what I imagine to be one of the world's most polluted cities = Hanoi (not why we went to visit it, obviously).  We managed to take 802 pictures in this week, so we will be selective and still have to do multiple posts.

I have always wanted to go to Beijing, ever since I can remember, so to say that I was excited is a vast understatement.  Here we are at Tianamen Square!

This is the south gate located at Tiananmen Square.  The old city of Beijing was completely gated and walled off, with the exception of the most outer wall, which was not fully completed.

Another shot!

They were NOT playing when they built these gates.

 Tiananmen Square is always packed!  This was the line to see Chairman Mao's preserved body.  EVERYONE in Beijing refers to Mao as Chairman Mao, not Mao Zedong -so, when in Rome . . . :-)  (All the Vietnamese in Hanoi refer to Ho Chi Minh as "Uncle Ho" too!)  We were pressed for time as we had a FULL day ahead of us, so we skipped the 2-3 hour wait.

This is the Great Hall of the People - the building where the National People's Congress meets.

 Chinese army was pretty present around the area.  We were able to sneak in this picture unnoticed.

 Anniversary Lantern.

 From Tiananmen Square, you can see the wall and beginnings of the Imperial City.  Basically, the way it is set up, the Imperial City is first behind the wall, then you walk through another gate (u.n.d.e.r.s.t.a.t.e.m.e.n.t) and get to the Forbidden City.  The Imperial City is basically gardens and pretty buildings where some official state business would take place.  All of this was built from 1401-1420.

 A close up of the gate to the Imperial City.  Yes, that is Chairman Mao's picture.

This is the view right after you first walk in the gate and see the Imperial City!

Ceiling of one of the many buildings in the Imperial City.  Gorgeous!

Can we say, DETAIL?!  You will notice that everything is in the colors Blue, Green and Gold.  Blue is for the heavens, green is for the earth and its people, gold is for the emperor.

Some pretty doors.

Fun fact:  You can tell the importance of a building based on how many animal figures it has on the roof.  The most important buildings were reserved for the Emperor's use only and would have 9 animal carvings.  The importance of the buildings go down from there...

In one of the buildings - a chair for the Emperor.

And here I am, smiling too big because I can't contain myself.  And yes, James is holding me down because I was bouncing around the whole day from excitement.

Another cool chair.  The emperor had great seats.

This is an ancient climbing wall basically.  The stone was specially brought in and assembled for the Emperor, the Empress, and the Emperor's concubines (can't forget them) to climb up every 9th day of every 9th lunar month.  By the way, James TOTALLY was not supposed to start climbing the Hill of Accumulated Elegance, but he did...

A view of the Forbidden City from a distance.

 And another one:

 And the best one:

 Yep, there I am again... uncontrollable.

 After that much excitement, we were starved.  Good thing our amazing tour guide, Jessie, knew of a good Szechuan restaurant where I had the best szechuan potatoes of my life.  I also had a sprite, Chinese style...

 And yes, my potatoes did come with their own burner.

  Check out the rest of the food.  Kung Pao Chicken, Japanese style tofu, some fried rice, sweet and sour beef, and my potatoes.

 After lunch, we walked to the Hutong Village.  The Hutong Village is basically a really old residential section of Beijing, with VERY narrow streets.  The whole village shares common bathrooms at the front.  This is a bridge on our way to the Hutong Village.

The lake by the Hutong Village - beautiful, right?

 A typical Hutong stretch of homes.

 Another picture of the lake right by the village.

 Street view in the village.

 Look at how old the buildings are!  So cool.

 This guy was jammin' out some street music.

After the Hutong Village, we parted from Jessie (did I mention how AWESOME Jessie was?) and met up with a good friend from South Carolina who know teaches in Beijing.  James and I met Melissa in choir at First Pres.  Five years later, we decided to catch up in Beijing over drinks!

And that sums up our first day in Beijing!!!!  More to come, obviously... so get excited!