For about 500 years (1400-1900) the space served as the home to the emperor of China (from Ming dynasty through Qing dynasty). We thought we could see a good majority of it by casually strolling through the area.
How humbled we became discovering there was not a chance we could reach the 950+ buildings in the 7.2 million square foot area. We did spend a number of hours walking in and out of the many buildings and covering a lot of ground. (Short video from inside the Forbidden City).
We saw a few interesting things that had nothing to do with the Forbidden City. Like the nice headpieces the little girls wore:
TANGENT
One thing that caught our attention more than any other oddity though was this:
Does anything in this picture strike you as odd? If not, take a closer look at the little boy bending over. This boy wasn't the only one who had his pants split from the back through the crotch wearing nothing underneath. He was commonplace. Why? We don't know. All boys around this age had their pants done like this (some of them did not look cut by the parents, rather purchased that way [see designer ripped jeans]). What was the purpose of this? Was it truly for defecating right where you were with nothing to catch it but the Earth? Did the parents trust that their child wouldn't "let loose" while they had a forearm to the bottom side of the child while holding them? Are diapers available here? Are they affordable?
And why was it that only the boys had this? All the girls undersides were completely covered and sewn up like a proper pair of pants positioned perfectly.
Needless to say we were perplexed. We considered doing a little research on the internet. Surely another curious individual wondered this same thing? At that point we realized that the words we typed into a search engine would not yield results we were looking for, or attract attention we desired (I have not tried it, but please feel free to try searching "little boys ripped underpants" or "bottomless pants of Chinese boys"). Let me know what kind of results you get with those searches. If you do find something pertaining to this issue, please fill me in. I would still like to know the logical reason behind this.
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Many of the buildings are not original because they had been destroyed by fire. These copper pots can be seen all throughout the city and were filled with water so when fire broke they had quick access to the flame retardant.
It was pretty incredible to walk in and among the home of some of the former Emperors of China and see some artifcats from their time.
It was pretty incredible to walk in and among the home of some of the former Emperors of China and see some artifcats from their time. 
The Forbidden City was mind boggling. It's size, history, and authenticity really moved us. This was a great first stop along the journey.
2 comments:
Love the information and the pictures. As far as the little boy's attire, this has always been common place in Asian countries as they didn't used diapers and even adults used the gutters of the city streets as toilets. It has changed for the most part in most Asian countries but not completely as you learned first hand.
Keep the information comming. --Gram
Ahh I see, thanks Gram!!
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