Saturday March 31st

1 and 2: Forbidden city.
3: Dragon.
4: Starbucks inside the forbidden city.
5: Gaggles of Chinese tourists.

I got up early hoping to beat the crowds, but I should have learned by now that in China there is no way to beat the crowds. I got to the forbidden city at 08.30, just in time to take up position behind hundreds of elderly Chinese tourists in matching baseball caps. The forbidden city is huge, but luckily my very clever audioguide flashed little lights to show where I had been. I liked this one a lot more than the Xi'an one.
I can't imagine what it would have been like to try to live in the forbidden city, or live outside and always wonder what was behind the walls. I would hate to be the servant told, "the emperor wants dinner in the garden of contemplative delight," and trying to remember which one it is.
This took til noon. Tried to go to the summer palace - no such luck. The lonely planet is a pile of poo and the instructions to get there utter gibberish. I give up and go to the temple of heaven instead, which also takes forever to get there. I realise I'm on the south side of the temple and the map has the street labled on the north, bah humbug. The temple is huge, set in an enormous park and it's still stuffed with tourists.
In the evening Maria, Merce and I go for dinner at a restaurant near the flat and order a ridiculous amount of spicy food. Portion sizes in China are a bit different to Japan.