the Forbidden City

...or not.

Look: I'm a Californian. There are certain rules Californians abide by. One of them is to never end a sentence with a preposition.

I'm joking. I just broke that rule. Rule-breaking is what we do in California. Drug laws are optional, speed limits are just conservative suggestions, and contravening societal norms is the official state pastime.

But seriously: all kidding aside, the first rule of being a sane Californian is this: avoid crowds.

Crowds are everywhere in California, and much like hurricanes, they are capricious and pervasive during certain times of the year, but can be anticipated and predicted with a degree of scientific accuracy. So over the decades, we've developed certain strategies for avoiding the other 38 million ass-hats that live in our lovely state and circumventing crowd-related calamities.

For example:

1. Purchasing a year-long pass to Disneyland so you can take a day off and go there on Wednesday instead of having to fight your way through the weekend throngs and ticket lines.
2. Getting the hell out of Dodge (i.e., the L.A. Basin) before 3:30 p.m. on a weekday, or else you'll be stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on Interstate 15 as the commuters head home to the High Desert. On weekends, you get out even sooner (or don't go at all), as everybody and their mother with a boat or a hole in their pocket will be leaving at noon for Lake Mead or Las Vegas.
3. Making a reservation at Cheesecake Factory or Joe's Crab Shack or Red Lobster or even the goddamn hot dog stand on the corner, 'cause you're SOL if you don't, buster. (Or rather, SIL—standing in line, something the average Californian has about 20,000 hours of experience doing.)
4. Picking the tiniest, dumpiest, lousiest backwater on the map and going to that town's DMV office, 'cause you'll have to camp out overnight in front of the one in your town and wait in a line around the building otherwise.

Get the picture?

Unfortunately, there's no escaping some crowds. If you're planning on a day in Santa Monica, Malibu, Venice, Long Beach, or any of the other coastal suburbs (or their fabulous beaches), you're going to get stuck in traffic. Just accept it. You'll have to fight your way in and fight your way out.

If you're anywhere near Grauman's Chinese Theatre on a premiere night, you'll be weaving through packs of sozzled socialites and dodging homicidal Lamborghinis. Might as well get used to the idea. 

And unfortunately for me, there seems to be no getting around the crowd (literally) anywhere in the vicinity of Tiananamen Square on a holiday weekend, rain or no rain. The place was packed with tourists, both Chinese and foreign. Miss H, Miss J and I had elbowed our way through the square and taken a breather in Zhongshan Garden, but now it was time for the main event: the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City. It's on everyone's Beijing bucket list. It was the residence of the Chinese emperor from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, a period of nearly 500 years. It consists of 980 buildings and covers 720 square kilometers—making it larger than that imaginary sky-citadel I drew with blue and red crayons in my 3rd-grade art class. (Touché, China, touché.)

Did I want to see it? Yes.

Did I see it? Sort of.

Miss H, Miss J and I joined the inchoate mass of people funneling into the palace at the main gate. I marveled at the great honking picture of Mao Zedong which adorned this structure. It seems that the Chinese people can't get enough of the Great Architect. His mug's everywhere: on the Forbidden City gates, in private homes and businesses, on postcards and stamps and posters, and on every single bill of every denomination of the yuan. (Yikes.) This one, however, took the cake: tall as a house and glowering over Tiananmen Square as though still ticked off at those student protesters from 1989.

We passed under the enormous, intimidating archway and found ourselves in a broad courtyard flooded with human beings:

I was annoyed and dismayed by the crowd. My imagination wanted to run away with me, but the roiling stew of people foiled it at every turn. I marveled that I stood on a patch of ground which Chinese peasants had been forbidden to look upon for five centuries. I wondered what kind of defensive fire the palace guards could call down upon the invaders or rebels who somehow surmounted the main gate and entered this vast yard. But the people shouldering me aside and tripping over my feet rather distracted me from these delicious ideas.

We passed the next great archway (whose doors were studded with great metal knobs, presumably for defense) and found ourselves in...um, another courtyard. Rather similar to the first, I might add.

We were rapidly tiring of this game. The only difference between this yard and the last one was that this new one had a ticket office in it. In the mist-shrouded distance lay the most impressive gate yet. It possessed great, majestic wings which branched out from the central structure as though to lock visitors in its mighty embrace.

...and which were also coated with ugly scaffolding.

The whole thing was being restored and renovated, it looked like. Just our luck. Tokyo Tower was being renovated when I was there in August; Mao's Mausoleum had scaffolding all over it; and now this. It was just about enough for the three of us. The crowds, the drizzle, the long walk, and the castrated look of the palace under construction combined to dampen our enthusiasm. With scarcely a word between us, we three turned about and walked away from the Forbidden City. We neither penetrated its unknown depths nor paid a single yuan in admission fees. We were tired, footsore, cranky, and ready for a nap. So we returned to the Novotel Xin Qiao and had one, a sinfully good one.

When we awoke in the middle of the afternoon, we were ready for our final conquest: THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN.

But that's a story for another day.