Starbucks—the Forbidden Store
Day Four—April 9: Today was Sunday and Grand Sightseeing Day for us, inasmuch as our programme is packed on weekdays. We started early in the morning with our guide, who introduced himself with some cool, crazy Chinese name “…but just call me Phil or Phillip.” We called him Phil (photograph below).
The programme for the day was packed. We started at Tiananmen Square—Google it if you want to, I’m not too keen on writing too much about it behind heavily monitored Chinese internet firewalls. After Tiananmen Square we walked through the Gate of Heavenly Peace (they know how to name things here) into the Forbidden City, which is a huge complex of buildings, and where the emperor used to live hundreds of years ago. On the back of the envelope, the Forbidden City covers just below one square kilometre—it’s huge! Below is a photograph of the Gate of Heavenly Peace with a painting of Mao hanging over it.
Besides the striking architecture, the size of the palace, the breeze of history—what I really find fascinating is the fact that there is a Starbucks store inside the Forbidden City. Of course I had to take a picture, which is below. My friend Ditlev is posing next to our hidden (forbidden) treasure.
(…we did so much more on this day… we saw more of the gigantic Forbidden City, we saw the enormous Summer Palace, and we went to one of the hustler markets to see how those work. I don’t have time to write about all that now, so: …to be continued :-).)
