The most glorious palace of China sit at the heart of Beijing. As one of the most largest and well preserved heritage site in China, the Forbidden City also known as Palace Museum, is a must see palace when you visit China. One of the most intriguing question when people heard about the Forbidden city is "Why is it called Forbidden City?", when this place is the most populated tourist attraction in Beijing.
YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT:
1. This palace is one of the three (3) ancient palace standing in modern China. It is home of 500 dynastic rulers in China and it is a national treasure for Chinese people. It is considered as one of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
2. As I mentioned earlier, it is one of the most visited tourist attratcion in Beijing. When we visited the place, there are many group of tourists with their respective tourist guide, both local and foreigners.
3. It has 9,999 rooms filled with ancient artifacts. With the number of rooms, you can imagine how wide the palace. There are one million laborers who built this kind of palace with its meticulous carvings and design.
4. It is one of most gigantic museum in the world. Seriously, your feet will sore when you want to see all of the rooms.
5. The Forbidden City was a home for 24 Chinese emperors. The Ming Dynasty started to construct this palace and moved the capital at Shenyang shortly. But when the Qing Dynasty reign, the Qing changed it, and the Forbiden City was their home and Beijing was became the capital of China.
6. The best time to visit the Forbidden City was in Spring and Fall. Spring offers mild weather but with scattered rain showers but with the blossoming of the flowers at the huge garden of the palace you will be amazed. When I visited Beijing it was fall, it is the best time to visit the place before the chilly winter sets in but it is also the most touristy season.
The Forbidden City was so called "forbidden" because in Chinese name, the equivalent of "forbidden" is Zijin Cheng-Jin, it is also a fact that this place wasn't a tourist attraction for the public that no one can enter or leave the walled city or 'Cheng' city without the permission of the emperor. But today, the chinese government open the palace for public and for tourist attraction and called it 'Palace Museum'.
A FUNNY STORY ON THE WAY; It was about 4:30 pm (Beijing time) when we arrived at the Forbidden City. Seriously, the popuation was scary, it was crowded with both locals and foreigners. Our tourist guide informed us about the place (thats the role of a tourist guide-to inform) before we go around the place. My brother and I was so excited to roam around and take photos of the different rooms in the palace, and we didn't heard about the exact time for us to depart on that place. So, in our excitement we went around, each rooms we took photos and we haven't noticed the time. My brother was astonished to find out that it was already 5:30 pm. Actually, the place became creepier when large raven flying around the place. It was like a horror movie! The crowd became less as well.
We went back from the location where our group was oriented, but theres no one there except for the ravens quaking. We look back, walk here and there, we even think about asking a guard, but they can't understand english. We also tempted to join other tourist group (but all of them are Chinese). My brother and I, think of a possible exit, since the palace has 3 exits, so we just walk and decided to just follow the crowd. I even ask my brother if he took a photo of our bus plate number, and fortunately before heading to the main road, our guide saw us and my brother saw the panda-fish flag he was holding. It was really a relieved for both of us (the tour guide and us) that we found each other. Our groupmates laugh at us because we might end up, paying for a taxi (which is expensive) from the Forbidden City going back to our hotel plus we might not have our free dinner on that day.
TIP: This is a serious matter, when the guide is speaking don't be in a hurry to take photos. Sometimes, you have to listen before you wander, because not all who are lost are wanderer, some are seriously LOST!
