Being on a real touristy tour means we’re hitting all the classic touristy stuff, and they’re touristy for a reason – ’cause obviously they’re the most famous historical sites in China. Today was Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. I don’t really know what constitutes a “square” but Tiananmen claims to be the biggest in the world. Here are a cupla shots both during the day and at night.

The tanks rolled in to the square just off to the left of the picture on the right. The fate of the citizen who stood in front of the tanks is unknown. He might very well be languishing in some miserable prison right now, unaware of his influence on history. Scary.

To enter the Forbidden City, you pass under the famous portrait of Chairman Mao. Beyond that is part of the Imperial City and beyond that even further through a couple of more gates to the Forbidden City. Now, I’m not about to give a history lesson. For one, you can read it anywhere and two, it’s probably quite boring for me to write it. Instead, I’ll just give basic impressions.

The entrance:

I’m writing this a few days later and so far my favorite thing is watching the people and the behaviors (for example, walking through the old town of Chongqing was my favorite so far). Still, the Forbidden City was quite impressive. I’m not sure how to describe the size, far bigger than I was expecting, mostly consisting of huge plazas surrounded by ornate buildings. The thing was that we passed through many of these gates to different sections. Most of the sections are quite wide open but we did get to some cozy residential areas for the emperor and his various concubines.

Unfortunately, some of the structures were covered in scaffolding, getting ready for the 2008 Olympics.

In the evening, after coming back from Tiananmen Square, we hit this night market for food. Lots of quality chow was available, freaky things like centipedes on a stick. I got some of these nice fried banana fritter things: