Forbidden Palace/Forbidden City

The Forbidden Palace and Forbidden City are often used interchangeably to describe the residence of the Qing and Ming dynasty emperors..and with good reason. This really is a bit of a city all unto itself. The place is huge with numerous courtyards that you can spend days or even weeks exploring and still not see it all.



I went with Andrea, Song, He Wei, and Wang Wei. Song, He Wei and Wang Wei acted as our tour guides and translators, and I must say they were great on both fronts. They got us to the palace and helped us get our tickets.




Though we probably could have figured that out on our own, since they even offer audio guides in 20 languages including Esperanto!


The grandeur of the palace is just not easily captured on film. I could only imagine what it must have been like for the first non Chinese people's to see the palace thinking they had reach the palace only to find courtyard after courtyard after courtyard before getting to either the ceremonial center, administrative center or the imperial residence or those of his numerous wives and concubines. In addition to the grandeur of the structures, we got a taste of the opulent lifestyle when we checked out the clock museum and the precious jewels museums in the Forbidden City.


Some of the buildings are used for museums and the clock museum shows off some amazing examples of both imported clocks form the late 19th century and those produced in China.


One of the signs in the museums describes the clocks as entertainment pieces. I'm not sure I would have ever figured that a clock would be entertaining, but when you see these and imagine them in motion, I'm sure it would be entertaining to see, and I’m sure it's more fun than watching paint dry.


One of the more exquisite pieces was the huge water clock that measured time with every drip. This was an invention developed in China though this technology gave way to the imported mechanical clocks from Europe.

The precious jewels museum was amazing. Lots of gold work, works in jade, and other precious stones, from the small the very large. These were carved from single pieces of stone.




After all that walking we were totally exhausted. And we still barely scratched the surface with the Forbidden City. It’s easy to see why the throngs of tourists pour into here every day. And why the palace has captured the imagination of many a visitor to Beijing.