Forbidden City

On Saturday I went to the Forbidden City. This was a place that was had been off limits to everyone for 500 years, and it was home to the Ming and Qing dynasties of emperors. The place is so huge it was hard to take pictures to actually show its size. The one courtyard was able to hold imperial audiences of up to 100,000. Tienanmen Square is directly across the street from the FC. Chairman Mao's body lays in rest in his memorial building. I will go to visit him at some point this summer. We definitely don't have a shortage of labor. These ladies were out front scrubbing and scrapping gum and dirt off the ground.Look at the throne, it had to be awesome to rule from this position. The FC is undergoing some renovation in preparation for the tourists coming to visit for the Olympics. Many of the posts and outside ornamental pieces have been painstakingly restored. They were glistening in the sun!! We barely scratched the surface of this huge place after 2.5 hours. There are 9,000 items that have been saved to show how they lived (clothing, military uniform, weapons, crowns, bedrooms), as well as royal gifts (huge jade carvings, ornate decorations). I will return here once the renovation is complete so that I can go up the steps to the Hall of Supreme Harmony. After the FC, we stopped to get lunch at Fuwongjing, just a few blocks over. After scarfing down some Pizza Hut, yes I ate Pizza Hut, we headed down to the the one back alley to find some more snacks. Look closely to what my snack is, if you are thinking a grasshopper, you are correct! It takes nutty, but I think that has to do with the oil that it gets fried in. Some Chinese people were in shock that I was eating it, which is weird because I guess I give them the same look when they starting eating the sparrow on a stick, or the other skinless rodent items on a stick!It looks like I didn't get all of this guy in my mouth!

The MPC opens this week, so I will be busy receiving products and on-boarding my staff. We open the staff dining hall on next Tuesday, June 10. I will have some more updated pictures from my venue. Next Sunday is the Dragon Festival, so I don't know what that means, but they have some triangle wrapped things in the grocery store that you can usually only get around now. I will need to pick some up this week.