The Imperial Palace (Gugong)
One of the must visit tourist
attraction in Beijing is the sprawling and resplendent Forbidden
City. The Forbidden
City was actually the Imperial
Palace,
locally called Gugong, of a long lineage of Chinese emperors. The emperors
lived there, held court and grant audiences in the majestic mix of pavilions,
halls and courtyards.
Center of the Chinese empire for about 600 years,
the Imperial
Palace
is perhaps the most complete and best preserved collection of ancient
buildings and monuments in China.
It is within the walls of the Forbidden
City that 24 emperors of 2
dynasties aided by their ministers, eunuchs, concubines, military generals and
servants ruled the vast expanse of the Chinese empire from the early Ming
dynasty in 1420 to the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911.
Reasons to visit The Forbidden City
The Imperial Palace or Gugong as it is know in Chinese is a
masterpiece of ancient architecture. Although the scale of the palace is
monumental, it is not oppressive and if the design is symmetrical, they are
not repetitive like what you see in modern buildings and parks. All the
buildings within the palace wall are carefully laid out and there is no sense
of rigidity.
The Forbidden
City was first constructed in 1420 by more than
200,000 workers, most of them forced labor under the imperial order of the 3rd
Ming Emperor, Yongle.
|
|
However, the palace was almost burnt to the ground
in 1644 when the Manchurians poured through the Great
Wall and invaded China to set up the Qing dynasty. However, the
Manchurians rebuilt the palace and retained the original design.
Here is why the palace is awesome. Occupying a
land area of 183 acres or 75 hectares, the complex is more like a city than
merely a palace. In fact when I visited the Forbidden
City on a full day walking tour,
I have still not walked to the other side of the palace before closing time.
Visiting tourists entering the palace gates for
the first time will probably be surprised that each gate and hall leads to
another, then another and each revelation is grander than before. The grandeur
of the palace is overwhelming.
It is often said that there are 9,999 rooms in the ImperialPalace,
which in Chinese legend, is one room less that the perfect 10,000 rooms in the
great palace in heaven.
When modern Starbucks opened up a café within its
walls, protests came in fast and fury. The local media called it a slap in the
face to the Chinese culture and because of this, the café closed its doors to
lie low for sometime. It has since re-opened quietly.
With such Chinese splendor and grandeur on
display, is it and wonder why tourists
visiting Beijing will insist on a sightseeing tour to The Imperial Palace
Forbidden City?