Beijing’s Top Tourist Spots: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City

By Patricia Mohr@

I. Tiananmen Square

Located in central Beijing, Tiananmen Square is a key attraction for visitors from China and abroad. Tiananmen—the largest public square in the world—is a living tribute to the history of Communist China.

At the center of the square lies a memorial to the martyrs who fought China’s revolutionary battles, from 1840 to 1949. The Monument to the People’s Heroes was built between 1952 and 1958.

China’s founder and first president Mao Zedong overlooks the entire surroundings by day and night. His portrait hangs high on the Gate of Heavenly Peace, which marks the entrance to the Forbidden City. Mao lives on in memory and in actuality. Street venders sell handbooks espousing Mao’s credos and beliefs. Tourists willing to bargain can buy a Mao watch for 50 yuan ($7.25).

Twenty years after the famous Tiananmen Square protests and massacre of 1989, the square shows no signs of the massive student revolt against the Communist government or of the massive spilling of blood that followed.

On a typical day like the day I visited in late May 2009, the square is serene but crowded, occupied by loads of tourists and the venders who seek to sell souvenirs to them. Soldiers remain in the background while maintaining an orderly flow of tourist traffic.

II. Forbidden City

There is a reason they call it city and not a palace. The Forbidden City is a vast collection of palaces that once housed imperial families and their extensive courts. One can easily navigate it, but it is not easily understood without a guide or legend. The imperial city was, after all, operable for more than 500 years, and it dates back to the Ming dynasty of 1406.

The Forbidden City is packed with huge crowds of tourists. Many travel through it in packs of tour groups led by guides speaking every language imaginable—Japanese, French, Spanish, English and Mandarin, to name a few of the most common.

The palaces mean the most to the Chinese tourists. They pause outside the roped off areas and stare and marvel at the palace interiors. I watch them and cannot imagine what they see. It’s a reverence for the Chinese imperial past and exquisite greatest of empire that existed long before Mao Zedong created the current nation, long before the Japanese invaded in the 1930s and long before China immersed itself with the world as an industrial power.

The movie “The Last Emperor” depicts the last time an imperial family lived in the city, surrounded by insulating and prying servants and imperial court members. Today it is a monument not only to China’s imperial past but to history itself.

The crowds, the cacophony of sounds, and the long trek through the various palaces—it’s a dizzying array of activity. At the end of my tour, I review where I had been: the Imperial Garden, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Palace of Earthly Tranquility, and the Hall of Mental Cultivation.

The Forbidden City, forbidden no more, is open to all the world to see.

***

If you go...

Plan on walking for long periods through thick crowds. To get a sense of the significance of the specific buildings before you go, visit this interactive map at http://www.thechinaguide.com/forbidden_city/index.php