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It being far too early for the first wave of tourists into the Forbidden City, I took my time on the way over, trying to create “interesting” pictures, and even then still had time to cool my heels at the front gate.

Looking to and fro, up and down, gave me ample opportunity to also appreciate how polluted Beijing was.  7:30am, but it’s not bright sunshine and blue skies; instead, it’s a grey haze that can be seen even from short distances.

At the stroke of… well, I forget what time, but at that time, the ticket lines opened and we were allowed in.  I picked up one of their location sensitive audio guides; I’d never used one before.  Mixed feelings on the experience.  It’s not that they did a bad job, and it was interesting to hear how fluent British English sounded with a Mandarin influence (i.e. slightly musical), but they gave me a lot of  borings facts I didn’t care about.  I don’t want to know where the Emperor had breakfast or where he napped.  I was interested to learn that the number of statuette guardians on top of the building indicated its relative importance.

Needless to say, the large tour groups were out in force.

I spent a couple of hours in  the Forbidden City – it’s very large – but I didn’t feel particularly inspired to take many photographs.  The overall architecture said “square, symmetrical, space” to me, and the various artefacts from the era were hidden in the buildings where tourists would lean over the barrier to get some harsh, direct-flash photographs from 10 metres away.

On the way out and towards Wangfujing, I did find some fun with reflections.   The Forbidden City strikes me as far more interesting from the outside.