Before we got rolling we took a sec to examine Alex's "Drawer of Sin" Syringes, Folded up bills, passports, candy, bills, playing cards, smokes and lighters...
..Yeah...
Alex is cool!
(What? Seriously. He is.)
Armed with the book, and a full days practice we set out at a decent hour to take in the square and forbidden city proper. It turns out to be especially good that we got that book, because I discovered later, that that same bookstore where we bought it is the only place to buy English books in CHINA! Ironically I found that out in the book.
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Before we got rolling we took a sec to examine Alex's "Drawer of Sin" Syringes, Folded up bills, passports, candy, bills, playing cards, smokes and lighters... ..Yeah... Alex is cool! (What? Seriously. He is.) |
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We
headed back to the main gate to the forbidden city. We figured we could
somehow get up to the top there...
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Stone Lions Guard the way. |
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I waited here, fully intending to punch Andy, but he snook by. Speaking of which, what is the past tense of sneak? Snook or Snuk? |
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Once
on top, we were able to get a great view of Tian An Men Square.
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There
it is, swarming as it were, with people. Visible are the monument to the
peoples heroes, and Mao's Mausoleum behind it.
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Todays Attempt to create a realistic looking group photo using my camera without handing it to a stranger was slightly more successful. |
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But
we got cocky and tried to make one where Alex would be tiny and Andy and
I could lord it over him. In the end, we just look silly.
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From here we decided to head into the forbidden city. Before we get started, a few quick facts about the forbidden city. 1. Not forbidden. 2. Could easily be it's own city. I don't know why we don't here more about it. For me the forbidden city was easily the high point of Beijing. It was amazing, beautiful, and damn near Disney magic in how well it disguised itself, and blended from one style to another, giving the appearance of it being bigger than it really is. See my entry on "Tokyo Disney: The Happiest 30 Square meters on Earth" for more information on this phenomenon. We were bound to run into street urchins on the way in, and sure enough we did. This little girl, was about 9 give or take a year, and new all the lines... "No! Good price. You like? on and on... Dad was not far away, who says good parenting is dead...
We asked her a few questions, and things went a bit strange when she started calling Alex "Woman. Woman." Alex didn't take to well to this, and felt it was his duty to educate this young girl on the difference between men and women. So he sat down, pulled out his trusty pen and paper and started writing the kanji for Man and Woman and pointing to himself and the girl respectively. Andy thought the whole incident was funny and joined in to laugh and listen.
Explaining this to her was easy, even at her tender age, she knew the difference between a boy and a girl. Give the frequency with wich Asians in general expose their genitalia in public, this is not surprising. What was difficult, well...impossible actually was explaining why we were trying to tell her that, and explain that she had called Alex a woman. This went on for a good 3 or 4 minutes before we moved on. I am just glad it never escalated and we didn't get in trouble. C'mon... two foreign guys huddled over an obvious minor saying "I'm a man, you're a woman..." what could be misunderstood about that? I know all the conversations I have had that started with "I'm a man, you're a woman..." have ended in slaps to the face, or sex.
Well, actually... just...just slapping... no.... nobody will sleep with me....
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If you ever wondered what a 9 year old looks like as she tries to understand why two foreign guys try to explain sexuality to her. This is it. Pretty confused... |
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From there we moved into the start of the forbidden city, the first gate house, the meridian or Wu-men gate. Wu-men. ... Wu-men. Wo-man. Woman. As I read this from my guide book I look up and all becomes clear. The girl wasn't talking about Alex, she was telling us about the gate. We all had a good laugh about it, even Alex, and hey, it never hurts to brush up on the basics, so I guess the lecture wasn't a total waste... |
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Andy and I and Wu-Men. |
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Inside more pissed off lions, often pictured either holding down a ball of fire, or in this case, one of it's own young. What is the significance of this? I don't know... |
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As beautiful as Japanese shrines and palaces are, they are nothing compared with the Chinese. First of all, the Chinese one are built of stone. Lots of stone. A pleasant change from wood. Two, nobody knows grandeur like the Chinese. The Japanese would make a carving in a giant stone. We would build a statue, The Chinese would build one thousand statues, to guard the mail building in the center of the 10 acre complex, that houses the tools that they used to carve the stone and make the statue. Then they would do it again for the masons shirt... Gradure on a scale we cannot conceive of... |
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Dragon Turtles |
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Check
out the size of people in the background for an idea of size...
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As the sun began to set we picked up the pace and started shooting more... It was golden hour, that time when the sun is going down when all the colors are soft, and you can take some amazing photos... |
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We
stopped at the clock museum in the palace and eventually made our way
to the back gate... or at least what we thought was the back gate..
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Forbidden Starbucks. |
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It
wasn't the back gate, but the place was closing so we had to make some
haste. We decided to come back again tomorrow and take in the rest.
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Turns out that "Back Gate" was only a gate that led to a totally different layout and style. We trusted someone to take our photo. |
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The quarters for the prince, his princess and concubine. I kid you not. The mountaintop house for royal threesomes.
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Once outside the real back gate, (we ran through the last bit) we were set upon by salesmen. Here is me getting pissed off at a postcard salesman who wont leave me be. I eventually got 3 packs. |
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Since
the sun was setting we hung around to try and get some nice sunset pics
from the wall surrounding the city.
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Alex asked me to take a second shot of him and Andy where he looked slightly less homosexual. |
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There
we go.
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As the sun set we headed back to the hotel district and found a night food market where tons of stands were selling any and all types of food imaginable. Beetles, Scorpions, Starfish, goat, beef, chicken, snake... it was all here. |
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Like I said, it was all here. I don't know who in their right mind would order goat cock from this guy. The guy next to him was selling goat cock and testicles for the same price... We ate KFC. |
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