frauke at large

A couple of days ago I watched Bertolucci’s ‘The last emperor’ again and now the Forbidden City makes far more sense than it did when I went to see it last weekend. It’s such as a huge place and unfortunately as it is only a stripped down version of its former glory, when thousands of people lived in it, it looks rather triste and empty and is thus quite difficult to take in.

Went there really early in the morning in the hope to beat the crowds, and although I think I succeeded to some extent, it was already quite busy with Chinese tourists … only a hand full of laowai (Chinese for foreigners) in sight. The city is a string of courtyards followed by a temple, followed by a courtyard, followed by a temple, followed by a courtyard, followed by a temple, followed by a … From the movie you can imagine that it must have looked absolutely amazing and colourful with all the emperor’s servants running up and down in it. My highlight was the back of the city – i.e. the garden area. It had glorious red temples, magnolias, huge peony beds and a lotus flower pond. Magnificent!

Also went to see the Temple of Heaven whilst in Beijing. I call it the temple of heavenly awesomeness, as for some reason all temples and halls here feature some grandiose name, like the hall of ultimate harmony and the temple of eternal happiness … someone had a field day when they decided on those. I liked the temple of heaven a lot more than I did the forbidden city for some reason. It was more manageable, set in a huge big park, the temples are more diverse and the exploring of it felt much more adventurous … Also, I must say, I am quite templed out at the moment – Chinese temples are all very similar and so once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all – plus ever since having been to Tibet nothing compares. Hence, my post sounds a little uninspired. Nevertheless, the ones part of the temple of heaven were quite cool.

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