Beijing - Pedestrians Paradise

Arriving in China in the evening after 30+ hours of travelling, the the next day was mainly a write off spent exploring the surrounding area of the hotel and not much else. There is a lot to see in Beijing and we started off with Tiananmen Square. It is the largest public square in the world sometimes accommodating 1 million people. It looks it too, in fact it looks somewhat too big. Amusingly there is a large police presence there. I say amusing because they use alternative means of getting around such a large area. One such means is by Segway another is golf cart. See, amusing. There are airport type security checks everywhere in Beijing with x-ray scanners and guards checking bags. Occasionally we even saw random bag checks in the street, a reminder that this is still a communist country. Tiananmen Square is also a reminder of the communist government with large monuments that look like they are made of giant concrete lego blocks. Bigger is clearly better in the communist world.
Right next to Tiananmen Square (and Im sure this is no accident) is the Forbidden City, the home of the Chinese Emperors for hundreds of years until Mao's takeover. There is a huge picture of Mr Mao at the front of the Forbidden City, no doubt to symbolise that he is now in charge, replacing the emperor. The Forbidden City is both simply and complicatedly designed. It is simple in that most of the buildings look the same and the whole complex flows from one building to the next. All building have their entrances down the central axis of the complex. This is the simple part. The complicated part comes from the symbolic nature of almost everything in the buildings. Nothing has been put there by accident, and they are facing certain ways by design. Personally I think the emperors court had too much time on their hands to come up with so many rules for things, a sort of ancient Seinfeld. Its well worth the visit to see the seat of power of such a long lasting civilisation and there is a lot of walking to do. If you have ever seen the movie "The Last Emperor" it looks pretty much exactly the same, which must have something to do with the fact that they filmed it here. Surrounding the city is a large moat which was still partly frozen even though it was mid March. Winter must be really cold here.
There are a few things to note about Beijing, things which represent China itself and its rampant progress. It is still a developing country and they drive like it too. The traffic is horrendous and there is a lot of it. There doesnt seem to be any rules and I dont think many people have been driving that long. Traffic lights are just a guide, a guide that is ignored as much as it isnt. If there was a class system on the road the pedestrians would be homeless peasants. Cars will run a red light and drive straight through a stream of pedestrians who are crossing on the green man and it is up to the pedestrians to either stop, get out of the way or just get run over. There is a scene in "A Tale of Two Cities" where a peasant is run over by a French aristocrat and his father receives a coin and a rebuke for slowing the aristocrat down. Im sure this is the first book/movie that was made available in China and this is the height of fashionable behaviour.