The Forbidden City and the Summer Palace

Our first full day in Beijing, we hired a taxi and drove to the Forbidden City. Located in the heart of Beijing, the palace is like no other in the world. For instance, you might think that this first photo shows you the palace, but that's not true. The Forbidden City consists of one palace leading to another directly behind it, then to another behind it, and so on. It consists of 90 palaces and courtyards, 980 buildings and 8,704 rooms. To represent the supreme power of the emperor given from God, and the place where he lived being the center of the world, all the gates, palace and other structures of the Forbidden City were arranged about the south-north central axis of Beijing. (Quotation taken from the site linked above.)

Since it was a Tuesday in mid-May, I'd thought that maybe, just maybe we'd be two of the few tourists to visit the City that day. Wrong! Nonetheless, we enjoyed our morning at the Forbidden City and found many of the buildings opened; they'd been closed when we were there in 2005-6 due to renovations prior to the 2008 Olympics. For the first time I was able to see garments and jewelry from the early Chinese dynasties. I always enjoy seeing the handcrafts of any period.

Just before we left the Forbidden City, I suddenly remembered my plan to photograph my current knitting project, a simple sock, while there. Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, the Yarn Harlot, photographs her knitting wherever she goes, so I decided to play copycat. I did manage to get this photo of the sock, which is actually the second of a pair, but I kept forgetting to photograph it at other sites in the Beijing area. I was really disgusted with myself when I realized I'd forgotten to photograph it at the Great Wall, of all places! I mean, really, how many socks-in-the-works can claim to have been to the Great Wall???!! My sock was at the Great Wall, but it stayed in my travel tote the entire time it was there.

Our final, big sight-seeing tour while in Beijing was to the Summer Palace. The Palace itself had been closed when we were there before, again due to renovations for the Olympics, but this time everything was open.

The grounds of the Palace are, by themselves, well worth visiting, and the local residents seem to enjoy going there to walk and picnic.

Ken and I walked from near this boat to around the lake and up to the palace. We climbed and climbed various sets of stairs and thought we'd climbed to the summit, but as we sat and rested we spotted folks up in a tower above us.

We took the lazy route back to the entrance gates, buying a ticket to ride the boat across the lake, then hiking only a short distance to the gates.

So that, in a nutshell, is our trip to China. I've left out so much that I wanted to share, and maybe I'll do a later post of odds and ends from our trip. Meanwhile, it's summer in Maine, my flower gardens are blooming, my vegetable gardens are looking promising (despite the deer I saw at the edge of the woods by one garden yesterday....) and there are summer stories to tell.

Thank you for sticking with me on this trip, and thank you even more for taking the time to leave a comment. I do read and appreciate your comments!

(The header photo is of just one of the many painted designs on the ceilings of various walkways at the Summer Palace.)