The buildings and architecture that emperors had made during their respective dynasties seemed like a lot of self-glorifying work; but man, the buildings are sweet! Almost all of the buildings constructed in the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, and Temple of Heaven are made solely of wood with no nails holding the structures together. I’ve uploaded a few more photos than usual in this post to give you all a better picture of how big the structures are and how beautiful the artwork on them is.
The first stop of my day was to the Summer Palace, a garden and place of residence for the emperor and the empress during the months between May and October. The Summer Palace is on a quiet and beautiful lake, with a large corridor that runs along the lake—it took about 30 minutes of walking, while stopping to look at the other buildings on the way, to get from one side of the corridor to the other. When the emperor lived at the Summer Palace, to get from one end of the corridor to the other he would hop on the “marble boat” that would take from one side of the lake to the adjacent corner. So, after we reached the end of the corridor, we took a boat back towards our starting point. There were beautiful buildings, a lot of trees, and a lake—having a place like the Summer Palace to get-away to would be so nice!
(The Emperor's gateway after he got off the marble boat)
While walking in the corridor, I couldn’t help but stop when I saw a vendor selling this T-shirt. Who do the Chinese think they are?!
After touring the Summer Palace, my tour group went to Vanderbilt Sorority heaven: a Pearl factory. Here we learned the process of collecting fresh water and salt water pearls, polishing them, and putting them on a string. Woo. I didn’t take too many pictures here because I wasn’t all too interested, but I did think that the mouse made out of pearls was kind of cute.
The next stop was the main attraction of the day: the Forbidden City. It was given the title “Forbidden City” because during the Ming and Qing dynasties the common person was forbidden to enter. Clever enough. The only way you were getting into the Forbidden City is if you were training in the army, a servant or worker for the imperial family, a member of the imperial family, or a lucky 13-17 year old girl who would be chosen by the Emperor to be one of his concubines. Interestingly, after the first three nights of marriage, the Emperor doesn’t sleep with his wife—only with one of his 50, or so, concubines.
When we got off our bus and walked up to the entrance of the FC, we passed by 4 different beggers. A little background, Beijing is full of homeless people that beg for money to get by. In addition, there are homeless people that are a part of gangs—they can be young or old—that are given a certain territory to cover with the purpose of begging, and then the gang gets a portion of the money collected. Now, these gangs aren’t anything as bad as the gangs in Central America or the U.S., but they are still not up to any good. But when we passed by these beggers, I felt like I was momentarily watching a horror story. The first individual was shirtless, sitting on the ground, singing into the microphone that he held with his one arm. The other side of his body had been nastily burned and he no longer had another arm, and you could see all of his burn-marks. The second person was missing half of a leg, and you could see bone at the end of her stub. The third individual and her friend in need were people that had begged to me the past two days—a lady and her eye-less friend. She came up to me, for the third day in a row, asking for “1 yuan, 1 yuan”, where she then proceeded to open her friend’s eyelids to show me his empty sockets. And the fourth person was lying on the ground, with body parts abnormally twisted and disfigured. Our group walked on by each one of these people.
In those situations I have a difficult time deciding how to act. As a Christ follower, we are called to love everyone, especially those who are seen as outcasts. But in those moments, I don’t know if giving money to these individuals is the thing that is going to show them Christ’s love: it’s definitely not a bad thing to do, but anyone can hand over a dollar bill to someone on the street. I guess it’s in those moments when I need to make sure I turn to God and ask him to work in these individuals', and my, hearts.
The Forbidden City was HUGE! These buildings were enormous and had the similar Chinese architecture seen in the Summer Palace. What is cool about the Forbidden City is that there are large courtyards with just empty space. We were told that is where the Chinese army would train and march together (I’m not exactly sure of the purpose for marching, but that’s what they did).
(Inside one of the buildings)
The courtyard in front of the Emperor’s main gate entrance (see the picture below) happens to be a very special courtyard. If a military member or common person did something that upset the emperor, the emperor would bring that person to the courtyard and beat him with a large wooden stick. After he had been sufficiently beaten, the emperor would send him away to be beheaded. Pretty sweet.
(Courtyard of death)
From the Forbidden City we moved on to a Silk factory. Here they showed our group the different developmental stages of a silk worm, and how it goes through a similar process of a regular worm becoming a butterfly, but this process ends with the silk worm dying in the cocoon phase and the cocoon being made out of silk. You are left with a silk ball and a dead, shriveled up worm inside. The silk balls are then threaded-out and stretched into thin layers of silk that can be used for quilts and pillows. The stuff was real soft and smooth. At the factory they also make some clothing out of silk, and one of the items they made was this blue suit seen being worn by our former president George Bush (two U.S. presidents in one day, and heck I’m in China)!
Our second last stop was at the Temple of Heaven, where the Ming and Qing emperors came twice a year to pray for good harvests. This was one of my favorite stops due to the bazillion trees at the entrance to the grounds; you could feel a difference of air quality being around the trees versus walking around Beijing normally. Once we got passed all the greenery, we were back to stone floors and beautiful wooden buildings. The Temple of Heaven was another large and gorgeous structure. The inside, which we weren’t allowed to go into, had large red posts and statues of animals (I think to represent sacrifices, but not totally sure), and the attention to detail was astonishing.
After seeing the temple, we walked to our last destination: a Tea House. On the way to the Tea House, we saw a ton of old people hanging out and playing cards outside the temple. I guess that’s the kind of thing you do in Beijing when you get old…actually, thats not too bad!
At the Tea House we participated in a Tea Ceremony where we tried 5 different kinds of Chinese tea. I absolutely loved trying the different kinds of tea, and ended up purchasing two different kinds that I will bring back to the U.S. (stop by the Whitmore house and try my Puerh and Jasmine teas)!
Overall today was a great day. By seeing these buildings, you can start to fathom the time, hard-work, and attention to detail that is put into each one…and the end product is amazing. But when you think about the purposes of the buildings, to create an awesome living space for one lucky family or for prayer to false gods, you can’t help but feel that these people were just missing the point. I’m not saying that these were a waste, because they preserve so much history and character of the country, but it just shows what the country was lacking: the knowledge and love of Jesus.
Tomorrow I will be hopping on the bullet train going to Tianjin where I will be spending two days touring before leaving for Shanghai on Thursday. Oh, and they call it the bullet train because it travels at a speed of 220 mph (346kph). Sick.
-Alex
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