A few days ago we visited the forbidden city. The place sure justifies the city part. To call it a palace will be an insult to the shear size of the place. It is probably bigger then most average size villages. For you dutch readers, its probably slightly bigger then the center of Leiden.
In contradiction to European palaces of having one major building with a few small ones, the forbidden city is almost a maze of large and small buildings with walls in between. Less then half of it is open to the public and yet after spending a whole day there we still did not manage to see all of the public areas. It really is that big.
The attention to detail is amazing. They had about 500 years to perfect it, and it looks like they really took the time. Even the stone sewer covers are nicely decorated. Every piece of wall, roof, window and stair has been given attention. You get the feeling that if an area is plain looking its like that because it was the intention, not for lack of attention, or time.
All that said there are some pointers the Chinese government could use to make this place even more interesting to visit. Hiring someone that can actually speak English as a language, and not just translate Chinese text for once. A lot of time when reading the signs next to the building you can see it is just literally translated from Chinese. The other place where improvement can be made is in the content. Every building had pretty much the same sign. It was so bad we eventually started to make jokes about it.
Every building was built in the Ming dynasty and had a name with Harmony, Longevity and/or some season name in it. Each one was rebuilt during the Qing dynasty, renamed twice using the same naming rule. And that’s about it. Only 3 buildings actually had more than that on their sign. A place with 500 years of history probably has more to say about its buildings one might think. Not that this will diminish the experience, which is amazing.
Yesterday we went to the Mao memorial. His body is kept there for all to walk by and admire. It is an experience you have to see when in China. Paula and I got the feeling this is their emperor. Its like the Chinese need an emperor, and in the communist time, the only possible emperor is Mao.