10/1/98: Revisited Tiananmen Square to shop for some kites… We had quite a fun time bargaining, since we had spoken to several sellers when we were there the other day and had a good idea what a fair price was… Due to China’s Mid-Autumn Festival the Square was jam packed…
9/26/98 Addendum: So, we set off to roam the vastness that is Tiananmen Square… Got the touristy snapshot of Mao’s portrait across the street on the gate to the Forbidden City… On another side of the Square is the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall with the Memorial of The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution out front… We opted to not go into the museum to see Mao Zedong’s sarcophagus… More interesting to us was the Gate House of Zhengyangmen (“Gate of the Zenith Sun”) at the south end of Tiananmen Square was an entry point into the inner city. Though the Revolutionaries destroyed much of the city wall, this gatehouse remains… The sky above the Square is filled with kites: dragon flies, goldfish, three dimensional hawks, dragons with dozens of kite sections, we even saw a tiger… We chatted with a few of the sellers, but did not purchase any for ourselves… We watched the flag lowering ceremony… We, along with the rest of the crowd had the luxury of fidgeting and sitting or squatting on the ground, but those poor soldiers in military attire had to stand without flinching all day… After dinner we returned to the Square and to our delight and surprise, it was alight with gleaming fountains and enormous floral arrangements which were all part of China’s Mid-Autumn Festival… It reminded us very much of Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park back home in Chicago on a hot summer night…
NOTE: The photo above shows Zhengyangmen, the “Gate of the Zenith Sun” at the southern end of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.
