Sleepless Travels Reloaded

See the rest of my china posts here.

Of course, being in Beijing the thing to see at the top of everyone’s lists is the Forbidden City!

It houses the Palace Museum and is also known as the 故宮博物院 (gu gong bo wu yuan). It was home (prison?) of the Emperor and his family as well as the governmental centre of the whole country from the early part of the Ming dynasty (1420) till the end of the Qing dynasty.

Shamelessly copied from the wiki:

The complex consists of 800 buildings with 8,886 rooms. It covers 720,000 square metres. The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987 as the “Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties”, and is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world.

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The common English name, “the Forbidden City,” is a translation of the Chinese name Zijin Cheng (紫禁城; Zǐjinchéng; literally “Purple Forbidden City”). Another English name of similar origin is “Forbidden Palace”. In the Manchu language it is called Dabkūri dorgi hoton, which literally means the “Layered Inner City.”

The name “Zijin Cheng” is a name imbued with significance on many levels. Zi, or “Purple”, refers to the Polar Star, which in ancient China was called the Ziwei Star, and in traditional Chinese astrology was the abode of the Celestial Emperor. The surrounding celestrial region, the Ziwei Enclosure (紫微垣; Zǐwēiyuán), was the realm of the Celestial Emperor and his family. The Forbidden City, as the residence of the terrestrial emperor, was its earthly counterpart. Jin, or “Forbidden”, referred to the fact that no-one could enter or leave the palace without the emperor’s permission. Cheng means a walled city.

Today, the site is most commonly known in Chinese as Gugong (故宫), which means the “Former Palace.” The museum which is based in these buildings is known as the “Palace Museum” (故宫博物院; Gùgōng Bówùyùan), although the museum also has charge over some surrounding properties.

I am so short ._.

Anyway, it was shaping up to be a very hot day (summer DX)
But we were pumped! Excited!! Finally we’d be doing some serious touristing!

The photo at the beginning of the post is of the entrance to a hutong on the way to the Forbidden City (our hostel was walking distance from the Forbidden City, pretty much in the centre of Beijing. It’s a pretty good place, I recommend it. Well. Don’t remember the name, but.) We took a number of pics of the entrance, but I like this one because of that weird pose/expression David has XD