The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square

An iconic first full day in Beijing—The Forbidden City in the morning, Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People in the afternoon and a Kung Fu show in the evening.

Photos (top to bottom; click on them to enlarge, but do so at your own risk): 1) With a family who first asked to take our picture outside the Forbidden City; 2) Inside the Forbidden City, which has 10,000 rooms; 3) Our Beijing guide “Cecilia,” Cheryl and Leah on the steps leading to one of the halls; 4) Guarding the Great Hall of the People, the vast government building where China’s 10,000 “representatives” meet; 5) Chairman Meow outside the Great Hall; 6) In Tiananmen Square, where Leah took us literally when we told her to go fly a kite; 7) In Tiananmen Square with the famous entrance to the Forbidden City in the background, and 8) Some of the performers from The Legend of Kung Fu in The Red Theatre. (All of them had less body fat and hair than I do.)