The Forbidden City

In 1421, emperor Zhu Di moved the capital of China from Nanjing to Beijing to better face the mongol threat up north. This was probably a good idea at the time. However, today it means nearly 20 million people are living in a sub-arctic desert that is wholly incapable of sustaining them. The government has been fighting this problem for centuries, first by building huge canals to bring water from the fertile southern regions, and lately by creating the Beijing Weather Modification Office, tasked with designing a rain dance ceremony that actually works. On the last evening of october 2009, the office fired rockets into the sky, seeding clouds with 186 doses of silver iodide, and allegedly triggered the earliest snowstorm in a decade.

Thus I awoke at 6 in a white Beijing, and had breakfast in front of snow covered red lanterns – a most unexpected sight. Before even leaving the hotel we learned another, more subtle consequence of Beijing's dryness: northern Chinese toilets are designed to use very little water. This is surely a good thing, but it does mean that they are wholly incapable of dealing with anything other than human waste. Used toilet paper, in particular, should be disposed of in a bin next to the toilet bowl and not under any circumstance thrown in the bowl itself – that is, unless it is your express wish to have a very humiliating conversation with the hotel manager. Now we know.

Our first stop was Tiananmen square, the heart of communist china. It looked undeniably soviet under the snowstorm, and the feeling was enhanced by the endless line of Chinese tourists queuing to visit Mao's mausoleum. I kept expecting the kremlin to suddenly emerge from the haze. It never did, and besides being the world's largest urban square, Tiananmen has little to show for itself, so we quickly walked on to the forbidden city.

As soon as we got close, a tall Chinese guy with a blue gore-tex vest and an umbrella came to us and promised to give us a tour for 150 Yuan per person. We accepted without haggling, which is extremely stupid, but entirely expected of mentally-challenged european tourists on their first day in Beijing. The forbidden city is big – you read it here first. It was built in the first two decades of the fifteen century by Zhu Di, one of the more megalomaniacal Chinese emperors, a decidedly immodest crowd. Since 9 is an especially auspicious number in Chinese tradition, the city has 9999 rooms, quite spacious for the residence of a man with a rather limited social life. You can’t even reach the palace proper before crossing three enormous courtyards, each sporting a ridiculously big hall in its center. The second of these halls, which many a world leader wouldn't be ashamed to call home if it stood all by itself, was used exclusively for the emperor to change from his inner-palace clothes to his "social" clothes, which he wore to meet visiting dignitaries.

The blood red pagodas looked enchanting under the snow, and we wandered for hours among the halls and gardens before the cold finally got to us. At the end of the tour we met the last emperor's nephew, who now earns a living as a calligrapher, artist and tourist sight. I'm far from convinced he really is Puyi's nephew – in fact I wouldn't be surprised if there were spare "nephews" to show when this one is out of town – but the calligraphy was beautiful nonetheless, and we could buy some of it, very reasonable price, good investment, etc. We passed.

In the afternoon we shopped in the ultra-modern Wang Fu Jin district, which wouldn't look out of place in central Tokyo, before repairing to a traditional restaurant in the theater district. We had very spicy food and lots of beer, then went back to our hotel feeling very, very happy.