More of Beijing

On Friday of my Beijing time, Altaa and I visited the majesty of the Forbidden City. However, after gaining access proper, it was a bit of a cop-out as several of the central halls including the landmarks Gate of Supreme Harmony and Hall of Supreme Harmony were encapsulated entirely in scaffolding and green net mesh with the tawdry consolation of having a picture of what we were missing painted on the front. The sweep of the courtyard before the Gate of Supreme Harmony, when it was empty at closing, was breathtaking, mind. The Forbidden City is itself vast (and used to be bigger until the communists in their rashness paid some destructive attention to the 'outer' outer walls in the 1950s) and deserves at least half a day to explore instead of the two and half hours we did it in to make it before closing. Tiananmen Square before the City isn't as great as people say. I've seen massive squares in Russia, Romania and Mongolia, but Tiananmen keeps getting broken up by monuments such as Mao's mausoleum, preventing one truly appreciating the scope.
Next day we went to the Great Wall via the Ming tombs. The resting places of most of the Ming emperors might be a World Heritage sight but there isn't much in the way for the tourist. We were shown (as everyone is) the layout of the complex holding the first Ming emperor to be buried here, but apart from the gate, the temple and the Spirit Tower, the tomb itself is under a massive earth mound. With the example of Egypt, it is probably best to keep tourists away from sensitive, ancient tombs with threats such as condensation from so many people breathing, but it doesn't therefore make it much in the way of a tourist site.
The Great Wall at Badaling is almost purpose made for sightseers, though it was originally built to keep out or deter the Mongols (and here was I with a Mongolian girlfriend). There were rundown, more authentic parts of the Great Wall, but I wanted the real deal i.e. what most people see. If I wanted to see ruins, I could go to any tumbledown place. One needs to be fit to ascend the Great Wall, prompting Mao Tse-tung to say to be a real hero, one needs to climb the Great Wall. There a good many steps. We reached one high watchtower, but it went only a little further before coming to a dead end, sealed off where part of the Wall had crumbled away. So we had to double back and use an auxiliary road to rejoin the path and reach the true peak of the Great Wall. From there, one could dimly see Beijing in the distance, beyond the mountains.
On the outskirts of Beijing are many curious sights. On our way out, we saw one of the Olympic stadiums under constuction and another hall for the Games - the stadium from outside looked like a tightly compacted spider's web or the craziest rollercoaster you'll ever go on. Further along, there was also a fairlytale castle that was only half-painted leaving huge swathes of patently unfairytale grey concrete, the result of a failed attempt to build a Disneyland for China, unfortunately (or fortunately) the company building it went bust and, anyway, it's far too much outside Beijing for most people to easily reach. We also went to a Chinese medicine clinic and a jade factory on the trip, the latter being the better of the two, with exquisite carvings.
The next day we went to the Temple of Heaven Park, where the Emperors used to pray once a year for good harvests. One of the few religious sites the early communists didn't vandalise (surprisingly, even refurbishing it), it has received many a foreign dignitary - Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon, George Pompidou and the Prime Minister of Estonia (all their photographs displayed in a hall, Pompidou looking particulary tickled pink). There are several venerable buildings all over the grounds, but I still preferred Beihai Park.