We had five lovely and busy days in Beijing. The first day was spent acquainting ourselves to this BIG MODERN CITY of 14,000,000. We exchanged the American $ for Chinese and memorized the exchange rates.
The city is crowded but all moving with discipline ~ everything and everyone seemed to have a place. Since the Olympics, the city has changed so very much we were told.
This made me happy to know Brazil will have this same opportunity to become just as fabulous.
Here in Beijing, there is the beautiful new Airport and mass transportation we see are new and built for the world visitors to the Olympics. The city is clean, bright and very progressive. We see happy people living there...it was a wonderful 5 days. China is a communist country, however, they are Capitalists which is working very well. They are hard workers to earn a good life for themselves. They can own their own homes/apartments/condos as we can. They can own anything except the land. The government owns all the land...but that makes no difference as they live free.
This is a photo of our hotel room while in Beijing.
After a lovely Chinese buffet breakfast, we began our day.
We visited the Forbidden City which is full of history and stories too interesting to imagine.
To the right is the moat surrounding the Forbidden City~ The Forbidden City was only open to tourists a few years ago. It is a 9000 room maze of courtyards, palaces and ceremorial halls where 24 emperprs and two dynasties rulled the Middle Kingdom. It is surrounded by a 160 foot wide moat as you see in this photo.
Once inside the gates we stand in the Courtyard where the newest young concubines were brought. The Emperor stood on this balcony to view them as they came through the gates.
Soldiers
would go to villages to round up all beautiful young girls to bring to the Emperor and Forbidden City ...he stood on the balcony to view the new group and select any that caught he eye for immediate meeting.The village people would try to hide their young girls as the life of a concubine was that of a slave. Their role was to be there for the Emperor's pleasure. Most Emperors had thousands who lived out their lives in the Forbidden City.
The favorite concubines of the Emperor was forced to commit suicide when the Emperor died, as were thousands of his soldiers.
To the right is a photo of the Emperor's bed. It is a high platform made of stone. This is where the eunuchs would bring the chosen concubine for the evening to visit with the Emperor. All Chinese sleep on stone or wooden beds with a thin mat.
Their time together was witnessed by soldiers and eunuchs. The eunuch's are the "guys" that lived with and took care of the concubines.
The story went that some of the women hated the Emperor and there was fear for his life and well being. For this reason, the eunuchs would undress the chosen concubine, prepare her, roll her in a rug and carry her across the courtyard so no one could see which concubine had been chosen and to make sure she had no weapons on her.
What is a eunuch? Boys of about age 5 or 6 were castrated so they could never desire or have sex. This was done so they could live among the concubines.
IF the boy survived this barbaric procedure, when they were grown, they were taken in by the Emperor to live with the concubines.
Amazing how one man can own as many as 20,000 or more concubines. There were times when he suspected some of the soldiers were having relationships with the girls and as a result, thousands of the concubines and soldiers would be killed.
That was a horrible time to be alive in China.
More next blog.
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