The Forbidden City and Week #2

大家好!

Just got back from my latest Saturday trip, and

you know what that means... BLOGGING TIME.

Today we traveled to the Forbidden City, one of

Beijing's most well-known landmarks. For all of you Disney fans out there, this is where the big fight scene in "Mulan" takes place. The Forbidden City was home to the emperors of some of the great Chinese dynasties. To give you an idea of how big the place really is, it literally would take a good ten or fifteen minutes to get from the south entrance to the north gate. Imagine what a hassle it must have been to get the door when people rang...

There are essentially two parts of the Forbidden City, the first being the squares and palaces in the front, and the second being the back garden. The buildings in the City are essentially what comes to mind when you think about typical ancient Chinese architecture - red buildings accented with gold, sloping roofs, pillars, etc. I feel like I've seen these style in photos hundreds of times, but there is little that can prepare you for witnessing it in real life. It's hard to put into words the magnitude of intricacy and beauty that I witnessed in these structures. Throughout our visit, I tried to imagine what it was like thousands of years ago, without all the tourists milling about, and I could barely fathom the idea that at some point, this was someone's home.

The front palace area was striking due simply to the size, but I found myself even more fascinated by the back garden area. Here, the architecture was complemented by a backdrop of rock formations and trees, the red pavilions even more impressive against natures greens and grays. To put it simply, it would have been a hell of a backyard to hang out in.

But unfortunately this week I did more than explore a Chinese national landmark, I also learned some more Chinese. Hard to believe that I'm already through with two weeks. It's even harder to believe that in two more weeks I'll be on a train headed for the Shaolin Temple!

For those of you who aren't especially familiar with the way this summer program works (which I would imagine is most of you), I spend nine weeks here in China, eight of them in Beijing studying the Chinese language, and one of them elsewhere doing a social study project. This year we had about eight different destinations to choose from for the social study, the most interesting (according to me) being Shaolin, Shanghai, and Inner Mongolia. This past week I decided on Shaolin, where I'll get to meet some monks, see some sights, and not least of all, learn some kung-fu! I'll update you guys on that whole front as the time nears.

Anyway, it's about six in the evening here in Beijing which means it's time for me to shower up and hit club scene like it's 1993 (I don't know what that means). Hope you guys enjoyed this week's edition of Jamey goes someplace cool in China and writes about it.

Stay cron-j'ed,

James