Holiday- Forbidden City and JingShan Park

I have just come back from a HUGE adventure. I had 5 days in Beijing and 9 days in the Philippines. There are so many stories from this incredible holiday that I am going to break it up into parts. I will start with my first day in Beijing seeing the Imperial City and JingShan Park.
Beijing seems to be a world away from Fuzhou. It was only a 2-hour plane ride up north. The day started extremely early in Fuzhou with a red sun. Ben, my travel partner and roommate, and I arrived to Beijing in the morning. We thought that a city that just hosted the Olympics in 2008 we would be able to use the Chinese that we know and maybe even show off a bit. Well, that slapped us in the face as soon as we failed to tell a taxi where our hostel was. I bowed out and called the hostel for directions. Turns out, our Chinese isn’t as terrible as I was thinking; it is just a different accent between what we have learned in Fuzhou and what is spoken in Beijing. It’s like going from the deep southern part of Louisiana to Northern Minnesota and trying to say the same things… Some things might get lost in translation.
We finally made it to our hostel, and immediately left to explore the city. We walked in the direction of what I thought was Tiananmen Square. We essentially just followed the crowds. In looking for one sight, we stumbled into the eastern entrance to the Imperial (Forbidden) City. The Imperial City (紫禁城) was humongous. Just inconceivably massive. It was one gigantic set of temples, palaces and gardens after another. I could have wandered around the city for days and not have seen everything. The Imperial City, much like the other historic scenes in China was constructed during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Only two dynasties lived in the City.
We walked through the Forbidden City for a good three hours. The City doesn’t seem Forbidden at all anymore with its palaces turned into gift shops. The Palace of Accumulated Purity was once the living quarters for Concubines but is now selling ice cream, maps of the city and knockoff relics. I think the Emperors and Empresses of the past would be losing an immense amount of face by having the city where they conducted all secret imperial business being turned into what it is. Despite what it is now… it was incredible to see so much history that was just nestled in the heart of the city just blocks away from where we were staying.
After a good trek through the Imperial City we went to JingShan park (景山公园), which was directly behind the Imperial City. The park is spread out around Coal Hill which is an artificial hill built in during the Yongle era of the Ming Dynasty. The hill is about 155 feet tall and built entirely from the earth that was excavated from building the moat around the Imperial City. There is a temple at the top of coal hill that provided the most dramatic overlook of the entire Imperial City grounds.
When we walked in through the gates of the park, the first sign we saw said, Coal hill, butterfly pavilion and the place where Chongzhen committed suicide. I was intrigued by the last location on the sign and wanted to read more about it. Apparently, under immense military pressure from rebels, Chongzhen (the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty) forced his empress to commit suicide, killed all members of his imperial household, daughters and fled to JingShan Park. Then, still dressed in his imperial clothing he climbed Coal Hill and hung himself from a tree. It was a very somber spot in the once imperial garden.

We spent another couple hours in the park just relaxing and hoping to catch the sunset fromthe top of Coal Hill.

The sunset was a bit anti-climatic because of the pollution. The sun just drifted away without any great denouement. It had been a very long day from Fuzhou to Beijing and I was ready for some food and bed!

We found a restaurant that was just like the ones in Fuzhou... we decided to branch out the next couple of days to get something we couldn't get in Fuzhou. The first night we did sample some local Beijing beer. It wasn't great but it was better than the Sedrin we get in Fuzhou!