Day 6...The Forbidden City

Another early start 8.30am (not so bad) to the Forbidden City. We had previously walked around Tiamen Square but not got inside the actual forbidden city. Tiamen Square did as much wowing this time as it did the last, it is after all an empty square. As usual, people were trying to sell us postcards ad books so you can only imagine my delight when one of the sellers was escorted away by the police in a van, the next person who tried to sell me something I threatened to shout over to the police...evil!! Apparently they have very strict rules on Tiamen Square and within the Forbidden city about selling, spitting, air blowing (which I encountered this morning while eating my breakfast) and anything of a rotten nature, and enforce fines on anyone breaking those rules.

The Forbidden City as actually very impressive, it is made up of a few temples and has in total over 9000 rooms! The culture that existed within the F.C. when it wasn't a tourist attraction is quite a shock, it was based around honour, basically if you were invited into the city, it was an honour for your family, it meant that you were smart, beautiful, potentially great..blah blah, unfortunately, it meant you had to sacrifice yourself. All the women inside the walls belonged to the emperor and all the men were castrated, once you had gone in, you probably wouldnt come out, and if you were really lucky, you could be buried with the emperor - this would be when the emperor died, it didnt matter if you were not dead, if he wanted you with him, you would be buried anyway.

Thankfully, the local guide had a sense of humour and didn't get offended when we questioned this culture and its reasonings otherwise it could have gotten ugly im sure. It wasn't that we were trying to offend, just more trying to understand.

So that brings me up to date, we have a 12 hour train journey tonight to look forward too which im sure is going to be dire...hopefully we will arrive in Xian in one piece.

Fingers crossed!

Team Domro