As we maneuvered our way through the crowd milling about in front of the main gate to the Forbidden Kingdom (it’s closed at night) I noticed many people taking there picture with the huge portrait of Mao Zedong hanging above the gates. I especially noticed a very happy looking little boy posing with his legs spread wide apart and his hands clasped behind his back. His father was proudly taking a picture on his phone, while the boy’s mother took a picture of her dearest son and Mao with a camera. Other family members stood around beaming at the heart-warming image of their young relative posing in front of “the greatest Chinese leader of the 20th century” I looked on, slightly confused at their smiling faces. Why were they smiling at the larger than life portrait of Mao? Had they forgotten who Mao was? Had they forgotten what Mao had done? Then it hit me: They didn’t know. They didn’t know that Mao had indirectly killed tens of millions of people. They didn’t know that he had directly killed tens of millions of more people. How much did they now about the recent history of their country? Did they know that Mao had ordered the police to let the Red Guards ravages through people’s houses? Did they know that he had condemned ancient Chinese relics to be burned and smashed? How much did they now about the scholars sent to labor camps to be “re-educated”? My guess is, not much.
The Forbidden Kingdom is HUGE. And when I say HUGE I don’t mean, wow, look at that mansion it has five floors! I mean wow, look at that huge cluster of richly decorated mansions, courtyards, streams, and stairways, oh, and by the way did you notice that there are over 9,000 rooms?
Strangly it was built to hold the Emperor, his family their servants, and no one else. Why, you might ask yourself, is it so big?
It is so big because the Emperor had one official Empress, but also had 3,000 concubines.
This courtyard is like the “mud room” to the Forbidden Kingdom.
As we strolled through one of the many routes of the Forbidden Kingdom our guide told us about the fengshui of buildings. Each building had animals on the crests of the roof, but because of fengshui there were only odd numbers of animals on the roofs. Special stone barriers stop “negative energy” from entering separate courtyards. The yellow of the tiles is only used by the Emperor because yellow is an imperial color.
The Great Wall is truly Great. Long lengths of rock wall connect towers on distant mountain tops. The blue sky (strange for Beijing) stretched endlessly above the orange trees. It was a Great day to climb the Great Wall.
As we trecked up the forest of staircases we admired the trees, blue sky, rocks, and of course, our newly purchased Panda Hats.
I like how your photo taken with a wide angle lens shows the expansiveness of the Forbidden City.
ReplyDeleteSufeifei,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the details you included in your post. One in particular was nice because I had missed this in my own visits: the explanation of the fengshui purpose of the stone barriers.
A lot of fengshui strikes me as nothing more than superstition (odd numbers good, even numbers bad), but I like design recommendations for entrance ways (avoid entering directly into the action).
Your comments about Mao and what the Chinese people know about him are interesting. It would be interesting to survey both Chinese and Americans to ask questions to survey knowledge in both countries about Mao's legacy, and about the wars of Western aggression against China (the Opium wars and Box rebellion, for example).
ReplyDelete