Armenian News – NEWS.am correspondent continues exploring Beijing.

Having overcome the subway routes of the Chinese capital and coming out at Dongdan station, I walk to the most famous landmark—the heavenly abode of the Celestial Emperor, the Forbidden City, which is in the heart of Beijing.

You can be searched and re-searched by metal detectors for about five times at the distance of 500 meters from the entrance (near the Palace Museum) and then you get into a huge queue, which is again checked by all kinds of devices and only then you are allowed to go on. But before continuing, I will tell you something you won’t find in any travel guide: While you are walking to the palace complex, two Chinese women may approach you (they always do this in a pair) and begin talking to you in quite decent English.  

Fortunately, your humble servant was warned in advance by seduced Beijing Armenians that after nice where-are-you-from and how-do-you-like-it-here-in-Beijing talks, you are offered coffee which suddenly costs 200 Yuan (approx. $33 USD). So, during the first hour of my trip to the historic center I was approached six times but because I don’t drink coffee, the girls were not able to make money off the representative of Armenia.

But in fact, this is not the whole story: we are also approached by young intelligent people, who introduce themselves as professional guides from some association and offer us their help, which again - according to the information provided by Beijing Armenians - at the end turns out to be unrealistically expensive (the Museum itself has free players which present the history of the complex in the most different languages).

We politely turn them down and go on. Interestingly enough, one can see crowds of law enforcement officers at every step, who, however, do not anyhow react on the consumation girls and pseudo-guides. But well, this is perhaps a tradition…

Let’s move on. Here’s what I suggest. It would be a very and very and once again a very stupid thing to write anything about the Forbidden City, not only because there is lots of information about it on the Internet, but also because it is impossible to describe the palace complex consisting of 9,000 chambers and countless halls on one page: you need nearly 40 pages to somehow reproduce what you see there.

Thus, photos will help you feel the series of halls, towers, chambers, squares, stairs, dragons, as well as the amazing coral garden. Believe me, this way you will feel them better than reading a boring lecture on a 15th century historic building, in which Ming and Qing dynasties lived. Remember the film Hero featuring Jet Li? I hope the photos below will bring the entire relevant experience home to you.