still alive!

yesterday: Forbidden City. Huge. Spaces. Hierarchy. Procession.

Many of the important buildings were totally out of bounds and wrapped in scaffolding and green netting as they get spruced up. I can see why they want to do that. Most of the place is looking kind of scuffed, and though that is the look I prefer - weathered and aged and full of history and stories - it's probably not quite the image they want to portray in such an important symbol of the city/country. But I guess the magnificence of the place lies in its spatial, or processional, qualities. Not just the huge ceremonial squares and architecture, but also in the smaller palaces/compounds behind and around, and in the long relatively dark corridors of the various gates; places that, as in the Suzhou gardens, constrict before expanding into the vast square, so that you truly feel the awed, overwhelmed and relieved by the open space, and by association, greatness of the emperor/empire . The hierarchy within the Forbidden city, and within each of its components... everything has its place and reason...

I barely saw the exhibits, I barely had time to see the spaces, to linger, to understand the place and imagine its rituals.

Of course, I know that much of what I imagine to be life there is very much inspired by that HK drama series from 2(?) years back about the concubines..

shit, it's 11am, and the Summer Palace, which I want to see today, is huge, so I really should get moving!