and here we are, I exited the wrong exit from the subway and am at the entrance to the forbidden city ( across the huge 5 lane road form Tiananmen ) hmm, sort of like the guards at Buckingham Palace, except the face masks gives it away :-) the one thing you notice straight away is the security, from as soon as you get of the subway, still in the subway, the security all the way to on the street Impressive. Built in 1420, the 18th reign year of Yongie of the Ming Dynasty, the Tiananmen ornamental columns are important complements of the Tiananmen main structures, With a height of nearly 10meters and a weight of over 20 tonnes, the columns are carved of white marble, There is a pair of ornamental columns in both front and back of Tiananmen. On each ornamental column, there is a plate called Cheng Lu Pan for collecting dew, and a crouching animal called Hou. and there are the big lions as well, 600 years old Hou and all the security cameras, count them, and they are on each light pole, not just this one. Makes you wonder who is watching the watchers It is about 2 degrees celcius, makes you wonder why the fire extinguisher  little soldier and big Mao. So at this point I could not turn around, it was a one way entry to the forbidden city, which I had no intention on visiting today, ( limited time ) just wanted to see Tiananmen Square, but I had to move on and walk all the way around the side to go back againcrossing the bridge at the east gate,  looking across to the huge walls surrounding the forbidden city, and yes, that is a sheet of ice floating on the water part of the east gate looking back towards the front love these tiled roof tops but looks weird with a brand new audi parked underneath nice door everyone, and I mean everyone here has a mobile phone lunch front door detail behind the door finally, the square, had to go through the subway entrance to cross the road, as you can not cross the road here, it is all barricaded, cars can't stop and you go through a metal detector before you can enter the square again, security cameras everywhere and ... fire extinguishersteach them form young age that this is the greatest country turns out these fire extinguishers are for prevention after that one time a falung gong or was it a Buddhist monk set themselves alight in the square as a form of protest ( never again ) security great looking sculpture, but I can't help but think that a lot of these peasants, farmers etc.. that joined the revolutionary army, would turn in their grave if they knew what happened here ready for any sort of crowd control cameras e v e r y w h e r e  woauw, so that was emotional for me. Out of respect I stood there in the square for a one minute of silence, annoyed by the fact that so many of the local population coming here are more than likely not aware of what went down here in 1989 :-(