At the heart of Beijing you’ll find the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and the city is designed around these two prominent landmarks in a grid formation.
The Forbidden City is huge, with impressive architecture and layout. You can spend quite some time here and even more if you’re really enthusiastic about the history surrounding it. Thousands of tourists visit this landmark daily as they get herded through this huge palace ground. Some places are still out of bounds and you’re at all times aware that someone is watching you.
Police officers and military personal guard this palace like in the old days. This time it might just be some crazy tourist or radical extremist wanting to make a point, but chances of this happening is very slim.
The security increases even more as you enter Tiananmen Square. A mandatory police check point and you’re on this massive square with thousands of people walking around as they gaze at the size of this world famous square. The trees that could have made this square beautiful were removed many years ago so that intruders could not hide in them and has since been replaced by CCTV cameras that watch your every move. Police officers and undercover cops patrol the square with vigilance and I was watchful to just sit down (there are no seats and you have to use the CCTV towers as resting place).
As I have mentioned before: you often go to world famous places to remember something small not related to the place at all. In this case it was a young child who could not hold his piss and decided to whip it out on the square to relief himself right then and there. No toilets, no trees, no seats, no food, only a massive square that carries a lot of history and significance for the People’s Republic of China. A spectacular sight and one I won’t soon forget.
