Wandering the Forbidden City

Sitting at the very centre of Beijing the Forbidden City was home to 24 emperors over a period of 496 years.  It is a large complex of hundreds of traditional Ming buildings that served as the Imperial palace.  In 1925 it was converted into the Palace museum and opened to the public.  Today it is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Beijing and is currently being extensively renovated in time for the Olympics next year.

There are literally thousands of ornate buildings in the palace ranging from the smaller outer structures used by servants to the impressive central ones used by the emperor himself.  The more impressive thing though is that each and every building is lavishly decorated and adorned with golden yellow roof tiles (the colour of royalty).

The Forbidden City was one of the many places I visited on my last trip to Beijing in 1998.  I have many memories from that trip but over the years they have all mixed together.  It was a strange sense of déjà vu as I wandered through the huge and sprawling complex.  Many a time I rounded a corner and realised I had stood in that very spot before!  I have an almost exact copy of this photo sitting in an album at home from my last trip and thankfully I now know where I took it

Before it was opened to the public in 1925 only a very select group of people were able to allowed to even get close to the outer walls of the City.  Those that made it inside were guaranteed to be looked after well and often acquired a lot of power over the peasantry living on the other side of the walls.  However, these opportunities often came at great personal cost especially for men.  To ensure the authenticity of the emperor’s blood line the only men allowed into the City were eunuchs.  Before these determined men were allowed to set foot inside the city they had to undergo a rather gruesome procedure to completely remove their genitalia.  How’s that for serious determination?!

Of course today the City isn’t quite so forbidden, and in some respects this has perhaps gone too far.  Going from a place that was off limits to the entire world it is somewhat ironic that there is now a branch of Starbucks within the walls of the City. 

I guess it is an interesting insight into the rapidly softening restrictions of China that a thoroughly capitalist and Western company like Starbucks is able to set up shop in the middle of a site of such historic importance.  What’s next – a McDonalds in the Temple of Heaven?  Only time will tell.

This entry was posted on 06/04/2007 at 07:49 pm and is filed under Sights and sounds of China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.