Notes From Beijing: On The Town

Now that we're here, where to go? If you're like me, and you want to be free to just wander, then Tiananmen Square is probably your best bet. It's easy enough to reach, and there are lots of places to go from there.

Of course, you need to be able to get there, and that means talking to the cab drivers. And, unfortunately, there's one key pronunciation error that pretty much every English speaker makes. Take a careful look at the name. Is there anything you might be missing? Let me help:

Tiananmen

Yeah, there's a second "n" there. I blame cursive for this. After writing cursive "m"s and "n"s next to each other over and over again, we just start blurring them together. Good news is, the cabbie will probably know what you're talking about, but just in case (and remembering my previous warning), the name is 天安门广场 (tian1 an1 men2 guang3 chang3).

Tiananmen Square is in one of the older parts of the cities and is surrounded by museums and monuments. As a result, there's really no risk of running short on things to do. The Forbidden City is here, of course, but there's more if you take the time to look. For example, here's something that, for some reason, doesn't show up in photographs too often:



That's a stella, a monument to an emperor (or at least a facsimile - I'm not sure if this is real or not). The characters on the surface (which you probably can't see in my lousy photograph, but trust me, they're there) record the emperor's name, lineage and achievements. There are lots of these things, which got moved around as the capital changed. Xi'an has loads of them, including the blank stella dedicated to Wu Zetian, dynastic China's only female ruler.

But I'm moving off topic here. Point is, there's plenty to see within walking distance. Eventually, however, you may want to move on, grab a meal, maybe do a bit of shopping. For that, it's off to the shopping districts and my next post.