Beijing 2024 - Forbidden City Side Courts and Exhibitions

Continuing on with our exploration of the different courts and halls in the Forbidden City, there were just so many to explore. We wandered into endless gardens and courtyards, and each one has a unique exhibition on. The one above was of the traditional musical instruments called a Gu-Zhen. But they way they exhibit it is so classy and well, relevant to modern times.

The instruments were so well maintained that even in their glass display, they shine brightly. Some were ancient pieces too! It's amazing how they preserved all these cultural items so well. 

A vertical display of a Gu-Zhen with characters carved into them. So beautiful. Almost like a magical spell carved into a magical item.

We also saw halls display of calligraphy. This was kinda similar to what you might find in the Asian Civilisation Museum, or the Peranakan Museum in Singapore, but here, it was just grander, and so many more pieces on display than just one single exhibit.

And surely you can't beat how the items were displayed, in ancient courtyard halls. Even going into any halls here was magical, like being transported through time into a different world. Just look at the flooring, from polished wooden floor, to concrete stone outside the garden. And the artistic character hanging over the door frame, so cute!

Wandering around the garden compound, we also came across a pavilion that has a pantheon-dome-like roof with natural sunlight shining in. I know it was a pantheon dome cause I've actually visited the Pantheon in Rome before, twice! And both time, it was an amazing experience seeing the lights shining in and bouncing off the concrete walls inside. But at the Forbidden City, it was placed on top of a pavilion instead, so the lighting wasn't as enchanting. But the dome still looked amazing.

We also saw so many elaborated stone carvings, mainly of mystical creatures and auspicious symbols. 

And lastly, we found a in-house post office! You could purchase some postcards and stamps to send them out. But unfortunately, they don't sell single postcards. I didn't feel like buying a whole set, so I just went in to browse and left kinda with mixed feelings. I guess I might have sent myself something if I could have just bought a reasonably priced postcard and a stamp. It would have made such a nice souvenir. But I guess sometimes, shops just want to make more money.....

Beijing 2024 - Forbidden City Gardens and Trees

 

Visiting the Forbidden City, I wasn't exactly expecting to see a lot of gardens and trees and parks. I thought those would be more at the Summer Palace. But I was mistaken. There was even a whole area at the back which was the royal garden. But when they said garden, it was a garden of stones and gems, lol. Very Chinese. But around the area here and there, I also saw unique gardens and trees. And this post is about those things. Above is just a cover of an exhibit I took featuring plants :P I just though it fitting for this post.

So here at the royal garden, you could see it was pretty much concrete. But I don't know if those are hundred or thousand year old trees, because they sure looked like it. The metal structures were erected to support the trees from collapsing. It kinda reminded me of the old trees in Japan, but somehow, it looked rather industrial looking here in China due to the metal support.

There were a few unique trees like this one above. I can't tell if it's one tree, or two? They merged in the middle. So are these life size tree bonzai art at play?

At the garden area, there are pavilions where you could sit down and rest, surrounded by the concrete garden. But this cute little tree here caught my eye.

I went closer, and again, it was one of those weird looking one/two tree. But it was rather short and cute, with lush green leaves at the top.

Here is a full view of it. Pretty neat! You could stand underneath it!

there were also normal looking trees lining other area of the palace like here. This empty space just leads to a locked gate, so no one went there except the palace guards. But I though the space looked rather beautiful.

Here are some cool trees giving shades to the people resting beneath it. This one looked just amazing! Like giant bonsai. And the red and green colour scheme looked pretty cool too. Two trees can share so many people! 

Here is my husband inside the cute little short bonsai tree :P

Beijing 2024 - Forbidden City Main Court - Part 2

 

Yikes, I forgot to blog about this post when I published it this morning. So I'm writing it now, totally forgotten what this post was supposed to be about. But I guess it's about the main court of the Forbidden City, and the super crowded area where all the tourist in Beijing simply must come visit when you're there.  I tried documenting all the door signs that I've visited along the way, with the hope of being able to document down all the places I've actually visited in this great big city. I have this idea that I can map my path with the actual map of the city once day. Yes, one day!

The Main Court area is I guess, where the emperor used to held court. So his throne was in one of the great hall. You can't really enter any of the great hall, but you can try your best to zoom into the dark hall and get a look at it. Note that every door sign is different in all my photos. 

As these were all at the main court, I wanted to capture them all here for whatever reasons :P

Apologies if this is a tad dull, just bare with me!

One of the other must-see item was also the marble dragon carving in the middle of the marble stairs. I was super interested in this and tried to capture a few photos of it. I was anticipating to be impressed by it, but somehow, it was hard to actually see the full details of the dragon itself. Interestingly, I recently just came back from a visit to Central Vietnam, and in one of the old clan in Hoi An, I actually saw one dragon carving that did impressed me! Haven't processed those photos yet, so you've got to wait a while to see those.

More auspicious carving. This was supposed to be phoenix and dragons, but again, it's hard to see the details of these two heavenly beings! The mountains and clouds were however, pretty clear :P

For my pothole collection, I found that my red shoe matches with these beautiful pothole inside the main court area :)

I also loved these faded red doors and walls behind the main court. Nobody seems to be interested in them, but I thought there were gorgeous. Very rich in colours. Note the blue part on top is decorated with golden dragons too! Almost everywhere you look in the Forbidden City, you are bond to find dragons almost everywhere!

Here is a dragon (me), taking a photo of the marble dragon <3

Beijing 2024 - Forbidden City Main Court - Part 1

 

Ok Ok, I've been blogging non-stopped a few days now about Forbidden City, yet apart from the entrance posting, I've hardly shared any info of the famous building. Well hold your horses! This is going to be that post. Cause after visiting both the left and the right courtyard, it was time for us to visit the main building! Or at least, see it from the outside since you can't really go inside. Above the building, and by this time, around 10am or so? It was getting more and more crowded.

Mainly the crowd was from tour groups, local and foreign. I see them visiting the palace, and wonder exactly how much do they really get to see. Tour groups are like touch and go thing for me. I've only every been to one real tour when I was super young and naive. Granted I might be going on another one with my cousin later this year (because she only does tour group and I am desperate to travel to almost anywhere).  So the tour group usually follows the tour guide, and each point they stayed a while, take some photos and moved on. I hardly see them visiting the side exhibitions or explore the alley ways of the palace. They do visit the main exhibition though, which was also on my to-visit list. As long as I get to see them before closing time, I was happy. Best to avoid the crowd.

One of the attraction of the main building was the marble dragon at the stairs leading up to the building. I sure wasn't going to miss that! I knew about this feature from the countless documentaries I've watched about the palace before. But seeing the real thing, well, it was impressive, but I guess I had a grander expectation.

We saw the jade looking lion from the outer court, here inside we have the golden ones. 

And as mentioned, you can't go inside the building. It is closed off to preserved the things inside. You can only look in from the opened doors and windows. They don't even put any lightings inside to prevent from damaging the items inside. So here you could see the writing plate, as well as a throne of the emperor. To the chinese, 4 character plates are of significant value. So I made sure to always take a photo of those royal characters! I learned that when I was visiting the Confucius Temple in Tainan in 2023, and saw how they treasure all the 4 character plates that was gifted to them by the different emperor of China. Pretty neat!

Here is another photo of another throne and 4 characters. 

We also wandered around the courtyard. There weren't many people to the side. Everyone, and especially the tour groups mainly focus on the center path all the way. But you could only see how wide and huge everything was from the side, where the stairs run all the way down, and everything looked almost like a maze.

This was how steep the stairs were! Huge stairs! 

I think the above is the back area of the main building. Even their back door is beautiful and grand. And yup, not many people here, cause who wants to see a back door right? Pity.

A wefie before we move on :)

Beijing 2024 - Forbidden City Beauties Exhibition Part 2

 

I realised that my whole China trip was going to be filled with art pieces and historical pieces. Although I visited many locations through out the trip, and seeing almost similar items, every single one of them still has it's own wow factor. So I guess I better get used to narrating the arts! So, second exhibition of beauties! Isn't the cover photo so elegant? Love the colour scheme too.

Beautiful divider of the exhibition. I always thought Chinese colour scheme would be chaotic and assaulted with a thousand colours that doesn't go together. Yes, I was much influenced by the clothing a lot of Chinese aunties tend to wear, lol. But here, at the palace, the colour scheme just blend together in a  minimalistic feel of it. I was pretty impressed. 

Beauty with wordings. Do zoom in to read.

I forgot what these are. But I like things that comes as a collection. So here are six.

And another six here. Can someone please read them for me! Lol.

Eight beauties in a set.

A Mulan reference? Two rabbits walking together, can you tell if I am male or female? Yeah, through our the trip, I also took a lot of Mulan reference related stuff and send it to a friend of mine. I love the Disney cartoon version of it, as well as the movie. 

A non-Mulan version. I kinda know the meaning, but I am too shy to blogged it here in case I get it wrong.

Another meaningful poem/song. Again, I think I recall what it meant. Perhaps something about love and parting? Lucky guess? Lol. 

Beijing 2024 - Forbidden City Beauties Exhibition Part 1

Next court we visited, a painting exhibit. I think it may be a new exhibit or something, as there were a lot of reporters on site. But luckily the crowd was still managable.

Again, the walk there itself was quite relaxing and beautiful. Wooden plank walk beneath the beautiful trees lining each side leading you into the exhibition ground. 

Not only was this just a painting exhibition, it was paintings of beautiful ladies of the court.

Although it was just a small hall, the quality of the exhibit was impressive. Mainly cause I've never seen so many paintings of such high quality before in a single place. I mean, there is the Singapore Gallery.... But somehow the art pieces here were filled with history and culture and oozed a different vibe all together. I guess it being held inside the Forbidden City itself adds up to the vibe.

I guess the word that would best describe it was classical. Classical art pieces of Chinese Court Beauties.

I even love all the chinese writings on them. So elegant and fine.

There was a gift shop outside the hall.  It looked like just another historical building, but there are signs saying that it was a book shop or a gift shop. Since there wasn't a crowd there, I was curious and wanted to step in to take a look even though the husband was at first reluctant to.

The inside was itself a work of art! The way they display the goods, almost like an exhibition by itself. We spend some times browsing, but didn't want to stay too long in a shop. Still, it was worth a visit. The items weren't too expensive, but we didn't purchased anything here.

A cute small display in one of the display corner. Simple and minimalistic. Love it.

After that, we head outside again and groups of people were everywhere. Some even brought their own chairs for sitting, a very common site in China! The next post will be a documentation of all the cool paintings of beauties from the exhibition :)