And you thought the trips to Tian'anmen Square were over! While I had finally completed my quest to see the Forbidden Palace, there was still so much to see there. Particularly Chairman Mao. Or at least his preserved corpse. Unfortunately, his Maousoleum is only open a few hours in the morning, so we all had to wake up early and go. This trip, however, was bolstered with even more friends - this time from Sweden and Ireland, as well as the South African and American from Korea.
I discovered that apparently the reloadable train passes can run a deficit.
I ended up outside the Forbidden Palace for a fourth time. At least this time I wasn't going to try to go in.
The fog was pretty thick, but since it was indoors, it didn't really matter. Though I did take a bunch of pictures of the outside stuff too.
Their segway cops look more advanced than ours.
We ran into a problem pretty quickly - there were no bags allowed inside. Fortunately, some of us volunteered to stay behind with the bags. I felt bad for them, but there was not much we could do so the rest of us got in line.
It looked like quite the line.
And it was indeed.
I got closer to stuff, so I was able to take a few more pictures. There wasn't much more else to do anyway.
When we got further in the line, we realized it looped around in the back - several times.
What was worse was that no one seemed to understand how lines worked. There was cutting all the time. And yet no one seemed too concerned. It was a strange state of lawlessness.
They had some really cool statues on the side. This one was under construction unfortunately though.
My Norwegian friend and I swapped hats for a bit.
Apparently cameras weren't allowed inside. I guess that makes sense when you think about it, but some of us were carrying cameras and everyone has a camera phone. And being in China meant we couldn't contact the bag-holders to grab them from us. We had to just hope that they would let us through.
My friend was pretty concerned that I kept using my camera with all the guards around and kept telling me to put it away, but I really wanted to take more dumb photos.
After something like an hour of waiting, we finally reached the security checkpoint. Ironically, I got through fine, but my camera-concerned friend was pulled out of line and escorted off.
For whatever reason, the rest of us were let through.
So, obviously I couldn't take any more photos. I had to keep up with the pace anyway.
They had a shop that sold tons of white flowers on either side. Then you climbed up the stairs and were lead inside. Right away there was a giant table for laying the flowers on. So you basically bought them, carried them for a few seconds, laid them down, and then they were presumably recycled back to the shop. Then you're lead to the actual Mao chamber.
You're not allowed to take pictures, talk, or make any noise really. You can't even turn to face him (or so I was told at least). You just march through with your head tilted.
The whole thing takes like a second. Ironic since the line lasted an hour.
Mao himself looks like some kind of plastic mold. He's bright orange. Probably from a combination of mummification and the lighting. It's worth noting that despite the fact that Mao was one of the first to sign a proposal that all great leaders be cremated after death, they ignored his wishes and turned him into a neon orange glowstick.
Having zipped through there, the few of us left were tasked with finding where the rest of our group was among the massive Tian'anmen Square.
Pretty sneaky, sir.
Fortunately, we did eventually find them somehow and we all regrouped and headed to the next thing.
She has my hat!
Here you can see that you can board, even if you can't afford it.
Our next destination had a ton of street carts.
And also some people selling these weird nose/mustache/glasses combo except they also have one of those New Year's tongue sticking out noise makers.
...I'm good with words.
Carts, carts, carts. I mean, there were like five of them total, but I got a lot of pictures of them.
I spent most of my trip figuring out where I was going at some point after I was there. Apparently I was going here.
So we got more fancy tickets and proceeded inside. I wasn't sure if everyone got the max ticket, but I felt like I had plenty of money still, so I went for it.
I can understand most of these rules, but when you take away a man's freedom to bugle. You take away his freedom to live.
It didn't look like a particularly large place, which was good because I didn't really have all that much effort left for looking at things.
I really liked their green water. Maybe they were trying to copy St Patrick's Day Chicago.
I tried really hard to get a picture of these bottles doing their infinite spin thing, but I ended up just standing around awkwardly for a while until I bought one just be less weird about standing around with my camera out.
I climbed some stairs and I thought I had reached the main part of the wherever we were and took some photos.
Then we went to climb up to the top.
The original chocobo.
Japan had trained me well for climbing stairs, so I kept running on up ahead.
There was also a bunch of rocks to climb, so I start hopping around on those, which was actually pretty fun.
A secret door!
...with nothing inside.
The view from the top.
I was having fun climbing the rocks, so I started trying to find secret paths and things. Unfortunately, it seemed other people had beat me to them.
Especially the kids.
I was pretty sure I had reached the end. I was just hopping around on rocks, waiting for my friends to catch up and watching them from slightly above.
I spotted some stuff on the other side of the wall, but I didn't think much of it.
I went inside the building up on top, but it was mostly empty.
I found an entrance down the mountain on the other side which seemed to lead to some more stuff,
so I used my ticket to go in without really thinking about if my friends would follow.
After a while, I began to think they'd catch up (for some reason) and went on a little bit to try to just finish the place off.
Took some more pictures of things I wasn't allowed to.
I walked to the other side of the tower and saw this.
I then realized I had only seen the tip of the iceberg up until then.
I tried heading back and looking for my friends, but they were no where to be found. I also had no real way of contacting them. I figured maybe they had taken a different way down, around the tower I went to. So I headed down.
There was a strange door at some point. It was a huge chokepoint. I can't remember what made the door strange and my picture doesn't seem to capture it, but I think the door swung open in a way that made it easier for me to slip through the space between the hinges and the door than to fight the crowd going through the door properly.
Stairs. So many stairs.
At least there were a lot of cool paintings above them.
I had nothing better to do, but try to find my friends and take a lot of photos.
When I reached the bottom, where they likely would eventually reach as well, I had to choose going left or right. The lake made a natural limit, so I could probably find them if I went around its perimeter. I ended up choosing left.
They had more of the paddleboats I really wanted to ride in (but not by myself).
I was pretty worried I wouldn't find my friends, but I was doing exactly what I was going to do anyway, so it didn't really matter.
At some point, I met a friendly person that talked to me for a little while. I think I ended up getting in a picture with him.
My friends were no where to be found. I tried using roaming data to download KakaoTalk, the main Korean chat program, but realized I had no way to find them without their info anyway.
Eventually I just gave up and explored the lake.
Secret doors!
There was a bit of boat variety, and plenty of places to rent or return paddle boats, and there were also ferries.
I decided to walk over to the middle island.
Someone had a kite.
During slack season, the employees get to wear pajamas to work.
Best temple name.
Spell-check is such a simple thing. At least they used punctuation.
This room seemed to lead nowhere, only further convincing me it was a jail cell.
I decided it was time to leave the tiny island and I spotted a ferry. I wasn't sure if they were free or not and I made my way over.
More boats.
I asked how much and he crossed his fingers at me to form an X. I took this to mean "だめ" and was confused. I tried forming an X with my arms as the Japanese do, and we had a strange conversation of X's until I figured out that the Chinese have a counting system past 5 with their fingers. While we use two hands to express anything higher than 5, with the exception of 10, the Chinese use one hand. And to express 10, they make an X with their fingers. Which is confusing because X's mean "No" in Japanese.
Having unraveled this mystery, I paid my 10 Mao bucks and got on.
Normally I try to delete duplicate photos, but something about this one...
Probably one of the hardest parts of being a ferry pilot is dodging all the terrible tourist pilots.
I ended up further into the lake on some kind of peninsula or something in the middle.
It took me a while to figure out which way I should go and ended up circling more of the lake, which was kind of what I wanted, but at the same time, I was already pretty tired of taking photos of things and not knowing where my friends were. Also, I had consumed a ton of time already, and it seemed like I wouldn't be back for a quite a while still. But still, I pressed on and took the long route so as to not miss anything I'd want to see.
The far side contained a lot more nature.
It was very nice sounding.
Some peculiar construction. It was like they were trying to build some kind of port or alternate route around. Perhaps preparing for construction in the middle, they were building a path around I now realize.
Asian-style mini-broom.
There was a pretty tall tower far off in the distance I wanted to see but never got to. And also a small island just chillin' off to the side of the lake.
Most of the path on this side was just path and trees.
There were some random ill-clad old people swimming. I couldn't figure out if it was allowed, but it shouldn't be unless they wear more clothes.
The path went on and on and didn't really have much on it. I mostly just took pictures of over the lake.
It was becoming evening, but I was slowly making my way to where I thought the exit was.
Not only a tourist attraction, but also a source of drinking water!
Another kind of wacky Chinese transportation device.
I saw this from afar and might have been a major deciding factor when I had to choose to go to the left or right to reach the other side of the lake.
It turned out to not be as cool as I expected (like Iwakuni's bridge).
Hurray, old trees.
What makes this the Lake-Dividing Bridge and not any of the other ones that divide the lake?
I really liked their aquatic backhoe.
Clearly an original structure.
More photos of the backhoe boat.
And then I was FINALLY on my way out! Which was good because it was starting to become the evening.
Despite being so close to a beautiful and massive garden/temple thing, the surroundings were more like a landfill.
Also, I have no idea what these things are, I should have bought one.
You'd never suspect there was a garden nearby.
Chinese men do not like shirts.
I found the entrance again. I had made a massive loop.
I had to recharge my negative card again.
I got back and ended up leaving through one of the wrong exits to the train station and was temporarily lost for a bit.
Also, apparently the Mongolians built the sewers, and they just kept them.
And last I found this wall, which isn't fooling anyone.
So, while I had gone to Tian'anmen Square again, at least this time I didn't try to go to the Forbidden Palace again. My friends had long finished the garden before I had. We all then got ready to depart in the morning. We had booked reservations at the sister hostel for the next day and we were all going to the Great Wall together (well, mostly together).
No comments:
Post a Comment