Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, and the Palace Museum; this was a big walking day and time on our feet. We joined a tour to cover off these places as it can be easier than trying to do it yourself, especially getting through all the security to get into the Square and into the Palace Museum. Apparently security was heightened after the Tiananmen Square incident back in 1989. FACT: The tank and the student incident didn’t happen on Tiananmen Square, it happened just down the road off the Square.
Security is high, at least one body check, once back scan and having to show our passport twice to get through security. On the Square I counted at least a dozen lamp posts with probably eight cameras on each; and there were the cameras I bothered to count. Around the Square and Police and Soldiers on duty watching all the time.
The Forbidden City and Palace Museum building are a labyrinth of building dating back many hundreds of years and are steeped with history. Each dynasty seemed to have a particular way they wanted it and tended to knockdown, repurpose or simply add new buildings.
As much as this is an awe inspiring place, with a magnificent and detailed history, I also found it a little boring to be honest. The history is something, but the amount of buildings and the scale of this site is too much to take in. Or, it might have been the way our guide was explaining all of what happened over th past thousand years ….
