Michael,

On Tuesday I took the Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City tour. It was a surprisingly long ride in the bus to Tiananmen Square, which is in the center of Beijing, and our hotel is also in the “center of Beijing”. But this is a huge city. Along the way I noticed an extensive shanty town that was mostly hidden by billboards. What I saw of it was an expanse of crowded tin-roofed shacks, with the roofs weighted down by rocks so they wouldn’t blow away in the wind. The shacks receded a long way into the distance. I suspect the govenment was trying to shield the eyes of tourists from the bad parts of town–as part of their attempt to spruce things up for the 2008 Olympics. They could put up one more billboard, and no foriegner would ever see that shanty town.

Tiananmen Square is huge, and full of people, both tourists and locals. There were a number of parades, gatherings, and people flying big colorful kites. Hawkers kept coming up to our group trying to sell us their kites. Or maybe they were just renting them to fly them? Hard to tell.

Down at one end of the square is Mao’s Mausoleum, and down at the other end is the Mao Government Center with a big picture of the Chairman facing out onto the square. We walked about a mile down to the Mao picture and past his building into the entry area of the Forbidden City, now known as the Gugong Palace area. We waited in the hot sun while our guide bought tickets for the group. A little lady with red baseball caps came by selling hats for 5 yuan ($1), so I bought one. It says Beijing 2008, and fits fine, keeps my head from getting fried. What a deal. You couldn’t get one that cheap even at Walwart.

Finally we entered the Forbidden City, which contains 9999 (said our guide) palaces, all looking much alike. This is where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties lived. The palaces differ only in size and shape, and they are all the same style (my pictures are on film so you’ll have to wait), some of them better restored than others. As far as I’m concerned, once you’ve seen one Ming palace, you’ve seen them all. After about 2 hours of walking around and through about 4444 palaces, we exited into the Royal Gardens and back into the city. There we encountered the first and only beggars we have seen in Beijing. Some had amputated feet, or were deformed. So much for the Chinese health system. That’s the only time I’ve been “spare changed” in Beijing, although I did see one homeless person sleeping on a bridge near our hotel a couple of nights ago.

After lunch we stopped at a Silk factory, where we saw how they stretch out the egg casings into silk strands. We even got to try it ourselves–a hands on experience. I recalled that I have seen similar small casings under old boards back in Maryland. Next time I see one, I’ll stretch it out into silk strands and see how much I get.

Our last stop was at a cloisonne factory. What an intricate process that is. Workers were transferring drawings onto paper, others were using the drawings to lay out arrays of metal strips, and still others were putting paint into the spaces between the strips. The objects the strips were laid out on ranged from small pots to huge sheets. Finally, the painted cloissone objects were coated with glaze and fired. They all turned out quite beautiful.

Labor is cheap and plentiful here. The number of people doing different kinds of jobs is staggering. The department stores and shops have 2 or 3 times as many clerks as our stores have. I haven’t heard what the average wage here is, but I’ll bet it’s only about $1 an hour. And I hope those silk, cloissone and jade artisans get somewhat better than that.

–rakkity