Sachin's blog: Last day in Beijing- Tianamen square, forbidden city and business visit

Today, we went to Tienanmen square to see Ex-Chair Mao's memorial. It was a great experience, then we had a long walk through forbidden city.

Tienanmen square has huge gates and one of the famous gates that has Tao's picture is in the picture below. The Chinese characters on our left translate as Chinese people forever and the letters on the right side say peace and heaven for everyone in the world. I thought it was nice national and global thought blending together on one gate. Unfortunately due to renovation, we were not able to see Ex chair Mao's dead body which has been preserved and open to public for many years.

After this we went to Forbidden city. Last emperor who was ruling till almost 1950 wanted to give his dynasty to his son but the Son denied it. As a reflection of that the son was kicked out his palace. For many years this city which hold 9999 rooms, many gates and big Chinese style temples/halls was forbidden to public and now is open. That is why the whole area is called as Forbidden city. There is tremendous amount of art work, Fenshui- YingYang balance in this city and unbelievable hard work, with crazy history that goes along with this art. I am just amazed with this art. There were 9999 concubines that were living in this room and emperor used to choose one of them every night. If she was beautiful enough and worthy he will have a child with her but beyond all of this if he really like her she will get the status of Empress. There were many concubine who wouldn't even get a chance to meet with the emperor. They used to put a lot Jade(very expensive and precious stone) on their body so the higher officials hear them walking and feel that they are attractive. Then these officials would recommend one particular concubine's name to the artist who would design food on the plate for king's lunch/dinner. Artist/officials had maximum 9 plates like these every day because it is a lucky no. By looking at the food setup/design on the plate and hearing about a particular woman king would choose which woman he wants to be with that one particular night. So on and so forth.

There were thousands of women who tried this and majority of them never became empress but some did. This was a small trailer of the history of forbidden city, there many more crazy things.

By the end of the night, we finally went on the business visit as planned. I am very lucky to have this opportunity. We actually met with the editor in chief of Chinese Cosmopolitan magazine. She was generous enough to answer our questions for 5-10 minutes out of her busy schedule. A group named "Trendz" which has 15 magazines under their control is very successful group. I got to visit their office in Beijing. There are some pictures of that too.

Enjoy!

Tieananmen Square- finally made it there!

Biggest craving work in forbidden city. It is all one piece of stone more than 1000 workers carried it and worked craving for 3-4 months.

The emperor's chair in one the halls. He used to sit on this before he went to court every morning. There are 10-15 places like this where he used to sit. Every seat and building has a purpose!

I traded (International business and trading :) ) my hat with the Chinese lady for few minutes, she was so surprise and happy to take a picture with me!

Ceiling in one of the halls. I almost led down to take this picture(so give me some credit!), it is amazing that how much detailed and high class art work they did hundreds of years ago without any technology!