Hey look, it's Chaiman Mao.  It really felt walking through history in China...seeing things you have heard and read about so many times.  I think that's why I had such a strong reaction to the square and the Great Wall, where as places like the Forbidden city I've heard of, but don't have any specific knowledge of it...so it's a bit less interesting to me.

The family facing the other way in the square.  I think our guide said that the picture behind us this time is the first Chairman of China...or something like that.  This also points towards the centre of the square, where as the other one, is the entrance to the Forbidden City.  You can get a sense of the number of people in the square, it's like all of Saskatoon came out to the square, it is designer to hold over a million people.  Imagine, a 1/30 of Canada's population all in one big open area.

There statues stood on either side of the central monument you can see behind use in the picture above.

This the main entrance to the Forbidden City, and one of the most famous images of Beijing.

The gates into the unknown.

The lions are symbols of the Emperor and all imperial building use them, with a lion on either side of the entrance.  On of the lions is male with it's foot on a ball which represents the world or something like that, and the other one if female with it's paw on a cub, representing her taking care of her offspring and the such.  These are now all over China, in front of all the big buildings...but it read that they were only allowed to be used by the government in the past.  Anyone else using them would suffer severer penalties...I don't remember if it was death or not...but that's what is floating around in my mind.

This was the main courtyard of the city.  The scale as tremendous.

The main path was in good condition, but as you can see, off to either side the bricks had been weather down.  My dad took a piece of on of the cracked and broken bricks with him.  I think that is forbidden though...hahaha...I kill me.

My dad had seen some pictures of people looking into this giant pots, so he wanted one.  He's him and my mother looking in.  It's empty except for some garbage...sorry to ruin the suspense.

The Forbidden City, really is a city, and not just a palace.  You can see the roofs as the stretch off in all directions.  The Korean roofing style seems to be an imitation of the Chinese design, down to the same carving on the corners.

This was neat building in the garden area of the city.  The rock work was all artificial...I think...I don't remember.  But either way, it was quite neat.

This is the rear wall of the city and the moat that surrounds it.  You can start to see the pollution in this picture as the wall start to fade away in the haze.