Day 18 - The Forbidden City, Hutong Area and Lamma temple

Today we walked through the Forbidden City and Tianamen Square. Tianamen square is the largest square in the world. It's insane how many people you can fit in it. There was this line that went on for at least a km. I couldn't figure out what it was but found out that because its a holiday, Chinese from all over China came to the square to go into Mao's mausoleum where his body is preserved for everyone to see! That's nuts! But honestly, if I had the time I would probably go too.
The forbidden city is amazingly huge. The grounds apparently have 8700 rooms. If someone was to sleep in a different room every night, the person would be 27 by the time it was done. This place is beautiful. This entire area was built according to feng shui principles so everything is complimentary. Only a few rooms are open for the public to see. Apparently there used to be a Starbucks here but they closed it because well, I guess they realized how unappealing it was in a historic landmark.

We then went for lunch at a Hutong household. The food was very good. There's nothing like home cooking. The Hutong culture seems to be the poorer people in China. Most of the houses here are protected by the government from being renovated so many homes have no washroom facilities. Everyone uses the public bathroom. Though they are divided by male and female toilets, the facilities consists of a room of squat toilets with no doors or garbage cans so toilet paper and used pads are strewn all about the place. So everyone pretty much sees everything. It was absolutely disgusting.

We took a rickshaw to a Hutong courtyard house. The "driver" was quite entertaining as he harassed other drivers in his way by pulling or pushing on their empty rickshaws. The house is basically a courtyard with a pomegranate tree in it surrounded by 4 buildings. It too was built according to Feng Shui principles. The north building is the tallest for the elders. The south building is the shortest and housed the servants. The east building is where the boy lived and the west, the girl, with the steps to to the east house being higher than those in the west house. The family that owns this house are the decendants of Manchurians and the painting on their wall was painted by the last emperor's son and has been passed down through the family.

I ended up going to Lamma temple, my this last day in Beijing and it houses the largest buddha carved out of a single piece of wood. It was definitely worth the visit as pictures don't do it justice.

Tonight are taking a 12 hour sleeper train to Xi'an. The sleeper compartment is tiny. Its basically a 6X8 foot room with 2 rows of 3 bunks. So 6 beds in all in a this tiny space. The beds are quite comfortable but seriously a tight space. I got the top bunk and I couldn't even sit up in it. We'll be arriving in Xi'an at around 9am.