Tiananmen and the Forbidden City

Ahh-now I’ve finally managed to get some time to log into my blog and write I guess I ought to do some contemplation. I only have two followers at the moment (thanks mom and Erica heh), so until my blog becomes an internet phenomenon anything I write on here will just hopefully help me think about my experiences in Beijing.
I think the most important thing to do before I forget my initial impressions of China and start to get used to being here, I ought to get a few of them out. At the moment I am still a little in shock after spending the day touring 天安门 (Tiananmen Square) and 故宫 (the forbidden city): until you visit them you can’t really imagine the scale of both, and the intricacy of the second. In Tiananmen, you are completely enveloped in recent Chinese history on every side, from museums to Mao’s mausoleum, and “people’s monuments.” The whole place seemed designed to make visitors feel small, both in size (it is about 900m by 500m) and in accomplishment (nothing but enormous willpower and a mass of humanity could have created something that large.) A few large screens in the middle of the square echoed the square’s more recent history, playing soothing music and showing pictures of the Chinese countryside to try to take away from the otherwise harsh feeling of being in the square.
Even after Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City was surprising. I had expected to see a more Chinese version of a European castle, and what I got was indeed part castle (it is equipped with large walls and could have conceivably been pretty hard to get into), but it was also part temple in that the rituals our guide described to us were intensely complicated. There are bridges over which only the emperor or his family could walk and stairways that were built to only be used by the gods (interestingly enough tourists are allowed to walk over the emperor’s bridge but the stairways are still roped off.)
In addition, the scale feels as immense as Tiananmen and the craftsmanship isn’t comparable. Every building (and there tons of buildings with a total of about 9,000 rooms) is a work of art in its woodcarving and painting. A few of us found ourselves thinking that the place couldn’t have possibly been around since the 1400s. Its hard to adequately describe all of this in words but I forgot my camera (because of course I slept too late in the morning and had a bit of a rushed exit), so unless I steal pictures from some fellow DSIC students words will have to do for now. I will probably be on again soon to post about everyday life but for now, 再见。