The Forbidden City

We spent just over four hours at the Forbidden City. It’s a huge complex, arranged in quadrants with a series of courtyards, and then more inner courtyards within those. It is quite breath-taking.

The palaces and the temples and the great squares were what I anticipated, I’ve watched Jackie Chan movies! There were no hordes of warriors but I had some visual expectations and these were met. It was the smaller touches which I hadn’t expected. The bass relief sculptures of clouds and dragons that ran up the centre of flights of steps; the cypress garden, with its ancient trees; the Hill of Accumulated Elegance (Dui Xiu Shan), surely the most wonderfully named pile of rocks and coral in the world; the flying goldfish, looking like something out of a Magritte painting.

In one small courtyard we found an exhibition of gold and silver housewares from the national collection. In another a display of art works, painted by teachers at an arts university in Xi’an. In a third was an exhibition of jade bowls and figurines. And everywhere the swirl of dragons; scultpted lions, cranes and tortoises; the great crocodilian gargoyles; and, the ornate decorative styles of the buildings which had once housed courtiers and courtesans.

At last, foot sore and visually saturated, we left the Forbidden City and returned to the hotel. The subway was more crowded now, but just as quiet, just as clean. We came out into the brightness of a Beijing afternoon, with just enough time to shower and change before heading off to dinner.