Learn Chinese in Peking

TIAN’ANMEN SQUARE AS A STARTING POINT
Tian’anmen Square is the starting point from where visitors can gain an initial perspective of the city. To the north of the square is the well known “Gate of Heavenly Peace”, with the outsize portrait of Mao, which also serves as the south gate of the Imperial Palace. 5 marble bridges lead to this gate and to a gently rising path, which in former times was reserved for the emperor alone. It leads along high walls through several additional gates to the palace wall and the Imperial Palace itself- also called the “Forbidden City”. You can easily spend an entire day here if you want to see more than just the representative buildings on the main avenue, but also the courtyards where people lived and the extensive palace museum, where parts of the treasure of the Imperial Palace are exhibited.

NEW TIMES HAVE BEGUN
Despite 60 years of communist government, the “Capitalist Tiger” was released in the 1980s in China. The age of Maoist revolutionaries in functional suits and crowds of workers practicing Tai Chi in Tian’anmen Square are a thing of the past. Beijing has entered the new millennium with giant strides. China’s youth is more interested in MTV than in Mao, the rhetoric of the Cultural Revolution has given way to advertising slogans in English, now emblazoned on copies of brand name T-shirts. Today, foreign tourists and investors mix with dusty bureaucrat and hip Chinese sporting mobile phones.