Our second full day in Beijing – part of three days in the Chinese capital ahead of our 2008 Diamond Princess Cruise, as well you know – would see us take in the sights of Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and pay a visit to some Hutongs. We started the day with the first of those because to do them in another order would have confused everyone.
Tiananmen Square dates from the seventeenth century and was built around the location of the Tiananmen (Gate of Heavenly Peace) which was ironically destroyed in fighting during the transition phase of the Minq to Qing dynasties. The area’s present-day form of a public square housing a monument and surrounded by important buildings is thanks to Mao Zedong whose mausoleum is also found in the square and who envisaged the largest square in the world. It’s not that these days but it’s still an impressively large and open space in the middle of Beijing directly to the south of the Forbidden City and, if you’re Chinese, it’s famous for nothing at all of any significance occurring in June 1989.
Not only was Tiananmen Square the first of the day’s sightseeing stops, it was also the shortest of our organised activities. If you were to visit Beijing on your own then the buildings surrounding the square could easily occupy a significant portion of your day, I’d imagine. Sadly, our excursion only included a fleeting visit and we didn’t get a chance to see them, nor did we get a chance to pay a visit to Mao Zedong’s mausoleum, the reason for many Chinese people to visit the square, and our time was spent mostly just taking photos and enjoying the experience of simply being there.
Our bus from the hotel dropped us off at Guangchang East Side Road and our guide led us across the street into the square where a few of the buildings were quickly identified and we were given a short period to wander off on our own with a meeting time and place explained. There were plenty of people about but not, it has to be said, anywhere near as many as there could be. The time of morning and this being a November played a part here certainly and our guide had explained that on a typical day when busloads of visitors would arrive from all over China and the rest of the world, the queue to view inside the mausoleum alone would be hours-long.
Eyes were immediately drawn to the large monument roughly in the centre of Tiananmen Square. This was the Monument to the People’s Heroes and, as it stated on the plaque facing it, it was constructed between 1952 and 1958 from granite and white marble.
On the north side of the square the view was taken up by the distinctive red walls of the Forbidden City where we’d next be exploring. The portrait of Mao was hard to miss.
To the east of Tiananmen Square, where our bus had dropped us off and where we’d be meeting again before moving on, was the National Museum of China with its distinctive facade. Sadly, the view of the building was somewhat spoiled by the cranes dominating the skyline behind it. Formerly the Revolutionary History Museum this is one of the most visited art museums in the world and is certainly a place we’d love to visit if we ever get a chance to return to Beijing.
The large building to the west of Tiananmen Square was the Great Hall of the People, used for legislative functions and ceremonial ones including celebrations and memorials. Both the Great Hall and the National Museum, as well as the expansion work on Tiananmen Square itself, were part of the Ten Great Buildings plan, itself part of Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
In the southern section of Tiananmen Square was the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, resting place of the embalmed body of the former Communisy Party Chairman (despite his wishes that be be cremated). Like everything else around the square it’s something we’d have loved to have spent time looking at but this pre-cruise visit to Beijing could only fit so much in. Sets of sculptures of revolutionary people were on either side of both the north and south entrances to the mausoleum.
Our free time generally involved an aimless, casual wander through the square, snapping photos and soaking in the experience of simply being in China, and keeping a close eye on the time, of course. We made sure we could always see the meeting spot so we’d know when people from our tour group were starting to gather but otherwise it was thrillingly relaxing to simply be mingling with hundreds of Chinese people, many in tour groups themselves, with lots of typical tourist activities taking place around us; pointing at buildings, peering at pamphlets, posing in front of structures for photos, etc.
It was as we were in the northern part of the square taking a few more photos of the wall on which Mao’s face was hanging that I suddenly felt a tap on my elbow. I found myself facing a pair of Chinese women, perhaps in their early twenties. In pretty good English the first one asked me if she could pose next to me for a photo to be taken by her friend. Now, we don’t like having our photos taken at all, and it’s why you will find it difficult to find any video or pictures of us on the internet (although they’re there, if you know where to look), but attractive Chinese women halfway around the world turn out to be my kryptonite when it comes to avoiding photographic capture and all I could do was smile and agree.
With small bows and thank yous the two women walked away and I turned to my wife who was also posing for a photo with a Chinese person. I then turned a little further and discovered a queue had formed of people who wanted pictures too. For the next few minutes we found ourselves the centre of attention in Tiananmen Square for people tired of grabbing shots of the surroundings and excited at snapping the elusive Western Tourist instead. This was 2008, of course, and I imagine things are not quite the same these days, but it was a fascinating experience if still a little unnerving to think that somewhere in China there may exist photographic evidence of our visit to Beijing and the fact that we won’t combust when posing for pictures in the possession of complete strangers.
It came time for us to gather at the meeting spot outside the national museum, something we did nice and early because we didn’t want to be the people holding everyone up back then, an attitude we retain to this day.
Once heads had been counted our guide then led us off for the next part of the day’s excursion in Beijing, a walk of just a hundred metres or so to the Forbidden City.