Spent the day exploring the Forbidden City. Even though it was midweek, and we got there relatively early in the day (10am), it was an absolute zoo. We spent a small amount of time fighting the crowds to peer in the windows and doors of the buildings on the “central path” before giving up and deciding that no matter how cool that stuff was, we weren't going to get a good enough look at it to know. For reasons that were unclear to us (most of the buildings seemed to be minimally furnished with lots of open space), all the people had to stay outside the buildings and peek into the dark rooms through windows and doors, rather than having a path through the inside of the buildings.
The buildings off to the sides were not so crowded, but had the same problem of peering into darkened rooms and not being able to see much. There were a few exceptions, but not many.
The buildings themselves were beautiful, but basically all the same architecturally as far as we could tell, and with lovely but very uniform ceramic adornments.
At the far end (near the North Gate) we found the gardens and rockeries, which were great in spite of the crowds.
Also a temple built atop a great fake hill of rocks.
Somewhat fed up, we decided to go ahead and pay the extra fee for the Hall of Clocks since Lonely Planet described it as “unmissable,” even though we really just wanted to leave. Low and behold, even though the extra ticket was only 10 Yuan on top of a 60 Yuan Forbidden City entrance fee, there was almost no one in there. It seemed that all the tour groups didn't visit, perhaps because their entrance fees were “included” in the tour, they got the cheapest possible tickets?
The clocks were really beautiful, and from all over the world, but especially from Europe, often with Chinese motifs even in the foreign clocks. We especially liked the one with a robot writing Chinese characters on the hour (not that it was running, but we did get to see the clock and a video of the clock running).
Since the clocks were so worthwhile and not crowded, we moved on to the extra fee Treasures exhibit, which started with the Nine Dragon Wall, a wall of glazed ceramic bricks with, you guessed it, nine large dragons molded as part of the bricks.
Next we saw an array of beautifully carved huge semi-precious stones, and a bunch of shiny Buddas. It was great.
If we were doing it again, we would have completely skipped most of the stuff that didn't require an extra ticket, and/or made sure to arrive earlier in the morning.
After departing and getting some lunch, we climbed the man-made hill behind the Forbidden City in Jingshan Park. The hill was apparently the big pile of dirt produced when they dug the moat, and the views down on the Forbidden City and of Beijing were excellent. After taking our time soaking it all up, we went back to our hostel for some relaxing and an early night to bed before our big adventure for tomorrow: The Great Wall!
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