Forbidden City gold and silver, part 1

All those years in China, and I only went to Beijing for part of two days. One day was spent on the Great Wall, at Jinshanling. The other was spent fighting my way through the crowds at the Forbidden City.

It was a fight. Within minutes of entering, I was separated from my travelling companions, by the surging crowd, and only found one of them about an hour later by chance as I was deciding where to look next. We played WeChat tag, and managed to get together at the exit.

The Forbidden City was a palace that expanded greatly during the Qing Dynasty. The wealth of the place was truly amazing, even after the KMT sacked the place before retreating to Taiwan with the spoils. What they left behind is still impressive.

One of the thrones

The entire complex has been converted into a series of museums organized by topic. Like most Chinese tourist spots, there are ample opportunities to get dressed up in period costume and pose at different spots in the palace complex. 

The two best museums to see are the treasures museum and the clock museum. Bandwidth here in Ghana is a little limited, so I'll only show pictures of some chintzy stuff today, and save the good stuff for later.

Silver candlesticks

Chamberpot with silver and gold inlay

Various articles with gold or silver inlay

Silver axle endpiece for chariot

Wine vessel with gold and silver inlay

Most of these artifacts are older pieces, dating from the Han Dynasty and the Warring States period. None of these are in the main treasure museum, but are scattered in some of the others, along with a lot of bronze pieces and weapons (so many weapons).

Sahara

Arrived in Ghana a couple of days ago. Getting used to the heat. Here are some shots of the Sahara from the plane.

The sandy, sandy sea

Goodbye China

This is my last day here.

I liked it here. It was comfortable. Perhaps too comfortable. I would have stayed here forever. It was an ideal retirement.

Oh well, back to the Ghanaian project, assuming the current market turmoil hasn't derailed the financing.

Stone by stone

One of the things I like about China is the way the Chinese use stone, even in modern-day life. Most bollards, for instance, a carved from stone. I suspect this is only possible due to the low value of labour.

Of course, there is a long history of using stone in China.

The Great Wall, seen from the air.

The Great Wall of China cannot be seen from the moon. It can be seen from commercial flights if you care to look.

It snakes across hills, built on what looks like the most difficult path possible, cresting hills and ridges in the parklands north of Beijing.

The most famous tourist sites have been extensively rebuilt. Some of them are wide enough for twelve men to march abreast. Many other places are falling apart, or have only been partially refurbished. I think these are more interesting.

Jinshanling is a less-visited section of the wall. Of course, travelling there in late fall also helps. In any case, there were few visitors other than the dozen or so on our day trip.

The terrain is rugged, with many steep climbs. Still, it must have been worse actually carrying the blocks of stone used to build the wall up to the construction site.

The Mongol side of the wall. Those are not solifluction terraces.

The wall was a barrier as well as a road. An army could move along the wall, easily keeping pace with an enemy army on the outside trying to outflank it.

As we walk along the wall, we start to reach places where repairs have not kept up with time.

 

The watchtower in the distance was the goal of our hike.

Along this stretch the climb was so steep it was tempting to go on all fours. Here was also where I really pondered the difficulty of carrying the stones while the wall was being built. I have been assured that they used donkeys.

At lunch I sat at a table with several others on the tour, who happened to be from Singapore. We were telling each other about ourselves, when one of them stopped me and told me I had a nice voice, and should go back with her to Singapore where she would get me a radio show. I told her that Singapore had too many of my ex-wife's relatives.