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Beijing
Beijing is the real name of the city. It is sometimes refereed to as Peking but that is an old spelling of the name based on an outdated transcribe from Chinese. After the introduction of pinyin, the new transcribing system, the spelling is Beijing. Peking or Beijing ( northern capital, bei = north and jing = capital) Have been the capital of China for more than 700 year, however it have not been the capital for 700 straight years. The capital has many times been moved to other cities due to invasions and other strategic reasons. Beijing has many times been invaded by Manchuria´s and Mongols, but always been retaken by the Han Chinese. Beijing has been the leading city in Asia for many hundred years. Many are the kings who have wanted to conquer the dragon throne in Beijing.
To be in Beijing is an incredible experience. It is like to be in a modern city at the same time as you are in an ancient city. Glass skyscrapers next to old temples end streets. The contrasts are many. With its 8 million people ( Probably around 11 with all illegal workers etc) it is Chinas second largest city, after Shanghai. With a very high GNP growth every year it is likely that China will be the world largest economy within the nearest 20 years or so.
There have been people living on the place for today's Beijing for more than 500.000 years. Scientists believe that the "Beijing man" was one of the first to stand up on two feet´s. The actual city of Beijing was build 1000 years ago. It was then the capital of the Yan kingdom. China was not yet completely united. The city was destroyed by Emperor Qin Shihuang (The united Chinas first emperor). The city was rebuild and become an important outpost to the wild nomads from the north. 1250 the city was once again burnt down. This time the Mongol leader Djingis Khan. His son, Khublai Khan, made Beijing to his capital for the Mongol Empire, including China. The city was given the name Khanbalik or dadu ( the big capital ). He also finished the great canal so that food could be shipped directly in to the city from the south. 1368 the Chines retook Beijing under the Ming dynasty. For a short the Nanjing was the capitol. The third emperor of the Ming moved the capitol back to Beijing. The same emperor began the construction of the Forbidden City and temple of heaven. Even in modern time there is a lot of things going on in Beijing. During the cold war they build an underground city under Beijing with roads and everything. It was supposed to protect the city in case of a nuclear attack from the Russians. There is one system on 4.8 meter and one on 15 meters depth. Both of them are built with little support for the heavy weight on them so the protection is very low actually. Today many of the rooms are rebuilt to discos and nightclubs and others closed due to the risks. In some areas you can enter the underground city from hidden places. There are also many new skyscrapers, shopping malls and offices build every day. Unfortunately they do also destroy much of the old city to make room for the new.
Wow, you can spend a long time in Beijing and its surroundings with sightseeing. Just to mention some of them: The Great Wall of China, The Forbidden City, The Summer Palace, The Ming Tombs, The Great Bell museum, The Chinese history museum, Beihai park, Beijing zoo, Yong he gong etc. There is so much to see and test in Beijing. Eat some Beijing duck, go to a Beijing opera performance, visit a Ming vase factory, look at a calligrapher write Chinese characters, shop, eat real Chinese food etc. The problem is if you go alone. It could be hard sometimes to find people who speak English. Today it is less a problem since most students study English in school. You could easily spend one week in Beijing with just sightseeing.
Tian an men square ( square of heavenly peace ).
This square is not only well-known for its massacre there ( In china today called The Tian an men incident" ) It is the worlds largest square with its 40 hectare. It was Mao who 1958 enlarged the square so they could have large parades there. When Mao died there were about 1.000.000 people gathered there! Along the sides of the square there are many important government buildings, museums and monuments. There is also a famous restaurant serving the same sort of food as the old emperors were eating. It is an experience to have dinner there. The square is next to the Forbidden City so you can visit both places on the same day. If the weather is good and especially in weekends there are a lot of people on the square flying with kits, looking at the guards, visiting Mao´s tomb etc.
If you enter the Forbidden City from the tian an men square, the first thing you will see is the "Gate of heavenly peace". You have probably seen this gate many times on television. It is the gate with the large Mao portrait. They have built a large spectator platform on the sides for 20.000 people. This is the place where Mao proclaimed the Peoples Republic of China. On both sides of the large Mao portrait there are texts in Chinese announcing: Long live the Peoples Republic of China and Long live the harmony between peoples of the world.
On this gate the old emperors stood and watch their people. Important decrees were lowered down to the couriers in a basket formed as a golden Phoenix. The name "The Forbidden City" is actually a western construction based on the fact that you would lose your head if you entered the palace uninvited. The Chinese name is "Gugong" or the old palace. The city is large, approximately 1 km long and 800 meter wide. As the most there were 70.000 eunuchs and 700 cooks etc. living there. The palace, or actually palaces, has 9999,5 so it take a while if you want to se it all ( the half room is under a stair and really very small ). The only one allowed having 10.000 rooms was the heavenly king him self so his son (the emperor) who ruled on earth could not have more rooms than his father. The first parts of the Forbidden City were finished in 1420. It was the emperor Yong Le who moved the city back to Beijing from Nanjing and started the work. He also decided that no houses in Beijing were allowed to be taller than the walls of the Forbidden City. This was the fact until 1911 when they started to build taller buildings. If you visit the Forbidden City, you should take one of the guided tours. A well prepared guide can speak for hours about everything happened in the forbidden city. The city has had a very colorful history. Unfortunately the city have many times been plundered from many of its treasures. In the end of the last emperors regime everyone , even the servants stole from the city treasures. To hide this from the emperor they burnt down many warehouses so he couldn´t inspect and find this out. Even the nationalist government stole much and took it with them to Taiwan when they fleed. Today you can look at much of it in Taipei, Taiwan. Yet there are many items left in the city, for example the dragon throne. If you like gardens there are many gardens from the imperial time. You can buy many books about the city and we recommend it. It is very interesting to read about the city and look at all the pictures. Read about celebration with 20.000 guests, about the emperors enormous dinner tables, all the power struggles, assassinations etc.
First, let us kill a rumor. The wall can not be seen from the moon. It is true that you can see the wall from space ship, but so you can with many large roads in USA or Australia too. In fact, many of the roads in e.g. USA are larger than the wall. Still, the wall is a great peace of work. To say the wall is more or less a grammatical error. From the beginning there were many smaller walls. Many of them have by time been connected to each other to create a large line of defense. In total there is about 6000 km wall! The reason for the walls was to protect them self from wild nomads from the north and other warring states. It was very common that the nomads plundered the Chinese kingdoms to get items they needed but couldn´t produce them self. The first walls were created more than 2000 years ago. From being minor works for many hundreds years a Qin Emperor decided in 221 B.C. to to let 300.000 people work with the wall. The first version was made of soil with ann outer layer of stones. Despite the wall the Mongols managed to invade China. Since they where from the north they had no interest in the wall and ended the work. When the Ming retook China they continued the work and build it much stronger and larger. During the last 100 years the wall have started to fall into decay. People have taken stones from thew wall to build donkey stables and garages etc. The wall is now on the UN´s list for world inheritance. In some places they have rebuild the wall or repaired it. Even though the wall have has some importance in the defense of China it nothing compared what it has cost to build it in silver and in lives. One advantage with thew wall have been the speed of information that could be send on it. On the wall there are towers which all were prepared to light a fire. If anything happened the fire was lit and next tower could se the fire and start a fire on that tower. In this way information could be send all the way to Beijing much faster than any horse could run.
Of the Ming dynasti´s 16 emperors, 13 of them are buried here. The place is carefully selected. There are mountains sorounding the valley and protecting the place from evil spirits from the north. There is streaming by the toms and there are much vegetation. Every tomb have a gate, a large hall, a tower, a treasury chamber, an a underground palace. Most of the tombs have yet not been excavated. The oldest, Changling, are excavated and renovated very recently. It was long time ago plundered. The road in to the valley is 6 km long and was only used for en emperors funeral. From the beginning there was also a large wall surrounding the whole valley. Today there is only marble portal left and red gate. This gate is the beginning of the "Immortals road". This is a 800 meter long road with much symbolic. There are 36 large stone statues on the sides of the road. The statues are carefully selected. If you look carefully on the statues you will find that all of the are lightly damaged. This is because a later Qing emperor wanted all " whole" statues moved to his tomb to show his greatness. By some "strange" reason all of the statues the following night lost a finger, an ear or something like that. Therefore no of the statues was moved and are in the same place as before. Changling tomb, emperor Yong Le ( 1403--1424) is the largest tomb and have also China largest wooden construction, about 2000 square meters. Wan Lis (1573--1620) tomb, Dingling, is the only one opened and by archeologists. Four floors under ground, behind enormous self sealing gates, is the 1200 square meter large burial area, or palace. Here was the emperor and two of his wives buried. This have created some problems for his eunuchs since it wasn´t his first wife who was at his side. The emperor decided that his concubine was to lie on his side instead. The coffins was later moved so his first wife was on his side. Most of the treasures who was here have been moved to museums in Beijing. Many of them have been copied and are placed here instead. A ming tomb could cost about 8 million pieces of silver. It is was it cost to feed 10 million peasants with food for a year. Since many of the emperors was very short lived, this was very costly for the state.
The summer palace is both fantastic and in some way sad to look at. The emperors who was supposted to rule the country and distribute the wealth, spend enormous amounts of money on their own pleasures instead of protecting their country. The old summer palace was burnt down by a English / French expedition in 1860 as punishment. They where not allowed to sell opium in China and because of this they burnt it down! The emperor build a new summer palace. Money who was greatly needed to arm China or fed its population was spend on this great palace. Instead of building a navy fleet, money was spend on a marble boat in the lake of the palace. It had canons and everything. In the park there is an old street, made especially for the emperor. The emperor could not walk on the streets in Beijing. He wanted to know how ordinary people lived so this street was made. The eunuchs was dressed up like shop owners when the emperor visited and played ordinary people so he could go shopping there. Today this is a very nice part of the park. It is very beautiful with the shops next to the lake, many small shops with all sorts of Chinese handicraft and "Tourist traps". You can visit the palaces in the park, look at all the paintings in the roofs or just enjoy the beauty of the park. You can spend up to a day here to walk around or maybe have a picknic. Many families in Beijing use it for picknic in the weekends.