Tienanmen Square

Today Matthew and I went to Tienanmen square. Matthew and I had a hard time getting there but we made it eventually. I think we ended up walking most of the way there even though it was pretty far. When we got there we were having a hard time figuring out how to get across Peace Boulevard, to the square. Eventually we found an under pass and got to the right side of the road. From there we could see the entrance to the Forbidden City. Mao's had was really big on the front.

To finally get to Tienanmen Square we went under ground and through a security check. They didn't really check Matthew and I as we looked foreign and thus not a threat, I guess. The Square is one of the largest in the world and follows the rest of the Mao asetic. In the book I am reading called "Wild Grass" the author quotes Mao as having said he wanted to cover the city with steam stacks, and Beijing does have that feel to it. The city is not a very pretty city it feels like and industry city. Even the housing seems like industrial housing.

The history of Tienanmen is greater than the actual place itself. While it is an amazing space with people selling the little book of quotations, Mao watches, flags, postcards of Mao, and just about everything you can thing of which has something to do with Mao. In some ways it is a strange place. Because of the security it is not an easy place for gathering.

At one end of the square is the Forbidden city and the other is Mao's Mausoleum. The one interesting thing about Mao being preserved is that he didn't want to be on display but wanted to be cremated. The mausoleum is only open certain hours of the day as they do not want to have Mao deteriorate more than he has. Some of the reviews said that he was looking waxy. Matthew and I did not arrive early enough to see him though.

After a while we left the square and headed through the oldest gate in Beijing, the only one left from what had once been one of the four city gates with a wall around the city. The wall and other gates were torn down and now where the wall was is the inner most ring road. In some ways it is really sad that Beijing is getting rid of all of what was old and moving to the new and modern.

Matthew and I had to go back under the road and then we started walking down a walking road. There were many expensive shops along the edge of the road. Many of them western stores. We kept going into stores that sold many things and pretending to look just so we could get warm. When we got to the end of the road we got a taxi back to Lotus Chen's apartment.

I decided to take a nap and ended up just going to bed.