Paradise Found: The Forbidden City

Day #4 Morning

Travel: Walk to metro: metro to breakfast then line change to Forbidden City

The weather was beautiful and the kids were all happy after a late breakfast. This was my first day without hand sanitizer. You think I’m crazy, right? I know I am. I’m the mom that doesn’t let her kids touch the handrails on the escalators or grab the door on the way out of a public restroom. China puts a whole new meaning on “public.” There were thousands, if not millions, of people everywhere we went, and many of the restrooms not only didn’t have a toilet (think hole in the floor to squat over), but also no toilet paper, hand soap or paper towels. My kids are constantly putting their hands in their mouth, nose, and eyes. The germs that may be entering their small orifices completely freaks me out. Apparently their immune systems are stronger than I thought. We’ve all been mildly stomach sick and have the sniffles, but we’ve survived. Now I feel like I can conquer almost any public area with kids in the U.S.A. Bring on the public bathrooms and handrails! I’m ready for ya!

Miles had to have a picture of this 3-wheel car. Masie cracks me up.

I stopped everyone for a photo outside this plaza. There were a few more people also taking photos. But once our family stepped up, it seemed everyone nearby pulled out their camera.

I tried to snap a quick photo of everyone taking our photo.

The Forbidden City located in the middle of Beijing. This is were the emperor and his many wives use to live. The grounds are huge and we only saw a fraction of the 900 plus buildings. They only allow a certain number of people to buy tickets each day, so I was thinking we might actually have a quieter day. I don’t know the cut-off number, but we again dealt with crowds the entire day.

That’s Chairman Mao’s photo on the gates as you enter.

We had a local friend showing us around for the day. His name is Miles too! Our little Miles made fast friends with him. Big Miles was tour guide, nanny, and photographer. What I love about the Chinese is their willingness to help. Often we were lost or didn’t know which train to take or which direction to head. Xiaojun would question the person standing near us and always get a kind answer or suggestion.

Beautiful stonework beside the stairs orignially was one whole piece of rock.

This kind man had a good look at our kids and then tried making them laugh. You can tell that our young family made his day. And he didn’t try to touch them. Made me happy.

Tourists pushing and shoving to see into the thrown room. I was pushed and elbowed and decided it wasn’t worth getting a closer look.

Whenever Masie would see a traditional looking building like these with the upturned roof eaves, she’d shout “China! Mom, there’s China!” I tried teaching her and her siblings a little about Chinese culture and history before we took our trip, but I still think most of her knowledge came from watching Kong Fu Panda.

You’d think these folks were looking at some amazing piece of art or jewelry, but they’re just eyeing my amazing children.

The large bronze vats seen throughout the Forbidden City were used to hold water for extinguishing fires as well as decoration. When the Allied Forces occupied Beijing the foreign soldiers scraped off the gold from the vats with their bayonets. You can still see the scrapings.