The Home of the Emperor, Close by the Burger King

Arrived in China a couple of days ago. Got to spend a couple of days in Beijing. Impressions? Flew in by Air China on a 770. The aircraft was comfortable and service was very good on the flight. I started to appreciate the politeness and consideration given to customers in China.
When I arrived in Beijing, I was concerned that I might have some difficulty transiting the airport, immigration and customs. Actually there was no problem and everything went smooth. I must say that it has always been easier and more pleasant to enter almost every country except my own. I won't go on a rip about US Customs and Immigration, and now TSA; but I think they could take some lessons about being efficient without being unpleasant from any number of other countries.
Beijing was easy to get around in, thanks to my wonderful hostess, who also is my younger daughter, and the reason for my China visit. We took a metered taxi to her organization's facility in Beijing, where we were allowed to stay for two nights in a nice room.
Regarding Burger King, there are a lot of real and fake American Style fast food places scattered throughout Beijing. Strange what our culture exports.
The next day (jet lag be hanged!) we rode by subway (three connections) to Tienanmen Square, and the entrance to the Forbidden City. (Digressing about public transportation in China; The system is made much more foreigner friendly by the inclusion of English language announcements of the next stop, along with a visual display of the same.) We joined innumerable Chinese tourists, always under the watchful eye of many video cameras and a few sharp soldiers in dress uniforms, standing at attention, along with a couple of guys in Men-in-Black garb holding fire extinguishers, I think to curb self immolaters from immolating.
As it turns out, the Forbidden city is a series of gates and palaces stretching from north to south for about three thousand feet. The first gate you pass through has a huge portrait of Mao over it. In Imperial culture, the gates grew in importance as you drew closer to the center of the grounds. According to wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City) it has almost a thousand buildings and almost ten thousand rooms. Sarah and I visited as many as we reasonably could, but didn't see it all. It is now a museum, so there are many artifacts on display in many of the various buildings. I was impressed by the Chinese ceramic objects on display, some of which were dated to approximately 4000BC. The Forbidden City itself is dated to about the 1400's AD.  One interesting thing I learned: There were marble pathways through the main meridian of the city, on which only the emperor could walk. Of course we had to walk on the forbidden pathway just so we could say we did. I didn't say I was mature. I did notice that a lot of the buildings showed signs of wear and tear, cracked and fallen plaster, un-restored paint. Some of this may have happened during earlier years when colonial powers sacked and stole artifacts from the city. There were huge bronze vats which had been gold lined, but the gold had been scraped off. How sad, and a reminder of some of the worst of Western interactions with China, that still probably bear on the minds and thoughts of the Chinese.

We stopped at one point and had a bottle of water and a bag of BBQ chips we purchased inside the city.  After, we circled back because I was wanting to see a display of bronze artifacts, but we couldn't find the building in the maze of 10,000 rooms. We did find a couple of rooms with jade and gold objects and jewelry used by the imperial family and staff.

It was a grand adventure, and as with so many such remarkable places around the world, you'd like to have more time to explore. If you get to China, this is a recommended must see of too many must see's to see. From the Forbidden City, we traveled by bus to The Temple of Heaven. I will describe that in another post. I did want to mention that as we came out of the Forbidden City, we were in some confusion about what bus to catch and a kind man who was trying to get people to ride in his taxi's took time to tell us where to stand and what bus to catch. I have been impressed by this type of thing several times on this trip; the willingness of Chinese to do random simple acts of kindness to foreigners, even though they don't appreciate the Western custom of lining up and taking turns. Politeness has it's limits I suppose.