Day 6 - China, forbidden city

A free day today, yet we still had to leave the hotel at 8. Our teacher had booked a bus for the class and we were to head to the forbidden city and also visit the temple of the heavens today.

We first visited the temple of heavens, which consisted of 2 large circular temples and really really large flat pieces of marbled floor.

It was quite meaningless without a tour guide, explainig the history that happened here, and to us, it was just a large expensence of space that was quite awesome.

Thinking of it now, it was probably filled with thousands of people or prayer materials or something. Yes, its quite meaningless without a tour guide..

We spent a huge amount of time in the temple of heavens, which was quite a wastage since there wasnt much to see in the temple of heavens. But since it was a large group, (not to mention, filled with complete i****s, they were so distracted/amazed by stupid things that they kept stopping to take photos whenever they saw something amazing.

An example? People using a large paint brush, painting caligraphy on the floors using just water. My classmates spent like 10 mins taking photos and being in awe, and then when they finally moved ahead, they realise that there is another man doing the same thing, and they would be equally amazed.

God.

We spent a good morning in that silly place, and then after we had lunch, we set off to walk to the forbidden city, through the tian an men square.

Yes, the place that has been shown on countless occasions on news and stuff. Im actually in it. And its impressive. Seeing the large Chinese flag flying up high over this epic parade square brought some pride to me. (oh man)..

It got me thinking why singapore did not have such things that made singaporeans proud. bleah.

The place was huge, and magnificient, only marred by the constant smog that blankets the city.

Pictures would never describe how big it looks in real life, its one of the things you must feel for your self. And not to mention, the sense of Epicness is heightened by the fact that so much history has taken place there.

We walked some distance, but we didnt really mind, the weather was cool and it wasnt as humid as it is back home. Soon we were at the gates of the forbidden city.

And boy, how epic was the wholle thing.

I had my wide angle on my camera yet its so hard to even capture everything due to the scale.

The buildings of the forbidden city are built atop high walls that are like 4 stories tall, and the buildings are about 4 stories tall to. So added up, you can just imagine how high and large the whole place is..

The pace was a lot faster this time, Vicky, our guide from pratt and whitney was rushing us through the forbidden city, and we barely have time to stop and take pictures.

Considering how spread out we were, due to the fact that some people were left behind when they wanted to take pictuers, while some are ahead of the group, its quite surprising that we had no problems of missing persons during the entire trip.

Forbidden city looks exactly like in the chinese shows. Remember theres always this scene where this messenger is running through the many doors, past guards, down the center of the palace, to eventually pass the msg to the emperor while panting heavily?

Totally true. And actually being there, you can really tell why. The distance you have to cover while running to the emperor, is really long.

The whole scene looks more epic in real life too..

Im sure a picture tells a thousand words, so ill leave you with some pictures later on.. i have a ton of pictures to sort through today... hmm

thus, im just posting this post up first, for those who are curious.. heh..

PICTURES!