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 :)