Day 2 - Beijing

Day 2 was our first day of sightseeing and we started off the morning by visiting Tiananmen Square. There's not much to see in the square for a Western tourist (as we don't much care about Chairman Mao's tomb) but its size at 100 acres (40.5 hectares) is extremely impressive.
Right across the street from Tiananmen Square is the Forbidden City which is the old Chinese imperial palace and it's even larger than the square. It is surrounded by a moat and a wall and was one of our favorite sights in China. With tons of buildings and squares it would be easy to get lost in the city for a day. One of the weird facts we learned about the place is that the area that housed the Emperor, his wife and concubines was served by eunuchs which are castrated men. With these the only other men being around, whenever a women was impregnated it was known that the Emperor must be the father.
After lunch we visited the Temple of Heaven which is a complex of Taoist buildings that were used by the Emperors for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for good harvests. When these ceremonies would take place a procession would lead the Emperor across the city from the Forbidden City to the Temple. During this procession all common people were supposed to stay inside and not make a sound.
In the evening we went out for a dinner of Peking duck which is a famous Beijing dish that consists of thin, crispy duck slices that are severed with little Chinese pancakes; really yummy. After dinner we caught a Kung Fu show that was interesting but a bit too touristic for our tastes. We really wanted to see the guys mess some things up instead of just ham it up for the crowd.