Beijing's Forbidden City

Hostels can be cheap. But you have to be careful, many charge not by the room, but by the person. If you are traveling alone, US$12 a night is a great deal. But times that by four and you’re talking a decent chunk of change. For US$50, you can get yourself a pretty nice hotel room, which is exactly what we did in Beijing. We stayed in a hotel just north of the Forbidden City. Our train arrived midmorning and we hailed a taxi for our hotel. After checking in and dropping our bags, we headed out again. With just four days in Beijing, we couldn’t afford to use a morning to rest up.

Our first stop was the Forbidden City.

For the seven years prior to moving to Hong Kong, I taught one section of sixth-grade world cultures which included six weeks on China. I was not a history major in college, and the class was a journey of discovery for me and the my students.

The 1987 movie “The Last Emperor” won nine academy awards including best picture. The opening scene shows the young emperor Puyi being coronated in an elaborately staged sequence with a cast of hundreds that was shot on location in the Forbidden City. It is a great scene that captures a China on the cusp of major change. I show this ten-minute opening scene to my students who have always responded very favorably. It helps that the three-year-old Puyi is unbelievably cute. Over the years, I have probably watched this scene thirty times.

To say that I was pretty stoked to see the Forbidden City in person, would be an understatement.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to show The Last Emperor to my own daughters before we embarked on our China tour. While on the steps of the Hall of Supreme Purity, I tried to describe to them the significance of what they were seeing and I tried to paint a picture of what that last coronation ceremony was like. But it just wasn’t the same as the scope and pageantry that Bernardo Bertolucci captured in his epic movie. But now the girls have pictures of themselves in front of the Hall of Middle Harmony and when they eventually do watch The Last Emperor, they will be able to say, Hey, I was there.

Likewise, not only will I be able to show my future students back in Chicago the open scene from The Last Emperor, but I will be able to show them pictures of their dear old social studies teacher in front of the Palace of Heavenly Purity.