Our day started with a visit to one of the wonders of the world and ended with a wonderful bit of traveler's good fortune. We started the day at Tiananman Square before heading into the Forbidden City - the home of China's Emperors for over half a millenium. This jewel is located in the center of Beijing, because the "center" is always the best place to be if you are the Emperor. It has survived over 600 years of emperors, dynasties, wars, political movements and the elements. Recently renovated for the upcoming Olympics, this treasure literally sparkled. We have another fabulous guide named Joanna (Wang Meng) who really gets how we like to travel and is teaching us many fascinating things about the Ming and Qing dynasties and the more recent days of the Republic and the current leadership. Wang Men's husband is also into anime, so this makes her a big hit with Jesse! Our favorite story of the City is how the paranoid emperors built the brick city floor 15 layers deep (!) so enemies couldn't tunnel up to attack them from below! See some highlights from the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven here (includes a few photos from my last trip, which actually was a sunny day!).
After an amazing "imperial court" lunch (see favorite restaurants), we visited the equally beautifully restored Temple of Heaven that was completely overhauled by restoration experts all with graduate degrees (photo above). On the way out of the vast Temple park, we came across a caligrapher who was demonstrating the differences between traditional characters and new simplified ones by drawing on the sidewalk pavement with an oversized caligrapher's brush dipped in water. He seemed pretty excited to see our family and offered us an exchange. If we take a picture of him with our family and send it to him by e-mail, he will give us a stunning caligraphy of the character hu (tiger). We seal the deal and have a wonderful end to a historic day (or maybe a historic end to a wonderful day).
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