Tuesday, May 10, 2011

China Post #15 Tiananmen Square

For the rest of Sunday in Beijing we had started off by walking down one of the cities original streets past several historic locations to get to the Lama Temple which in hindsight is kind of like a much smaller version of the Forbidden City except with religion as its focus as opposed to the emperor. There were the standard lions guarding the gate of which there were larger ones at the Forbidden City. The female one is the one with the "animal" under its foot, as explained by an american, or with a baby lion in actuality, while the male typically has a ball.
There was another angry dragon turtle, this is supposed to be the offspring of the dragon and Linda now thinks it is so cute. Again a much bigger one at the City but you could not get right next to it like this one.
After finishing up with the Forbidden City we stopped at this flower park. Upon entering there was this rabbit, since it is the year of...
There were lilies? of several different colors, pink, red, yellow and Linda.
After the park we headed to Tiananmen Square. We had to go through a tunnel under the large road that separated the square from the flower park and the City. Along either side of the tunnel were these carved stone panels, intermixed with army guards.
Once out in the square I was actually surprised at how empty it was, not really the lack of people because it was raining, but there was the monument
And if you turned around there was a flag pole, the building with the photo of Mao is across the street.
This is the Workers on the front side of Mao's tomb, there is a matching sculpture on the opposite side of the entrance.
And this is the one on the back side of Mao's tomb.
An exhausted father and son. After having carried him for 2 straight days up and down stairs and all over Beijing I was having to take breaks every half hour or so for my feet. All I wanted was a bucket of ice water.

No comments:

Post a Comment