Street Special: streets around the Forbidden City 

Jingshan Qianjie runs between the Forbidden City and Jingshan, the highest hill in the urban quarter of Beijing.

Jingshan park was another royal recreation. It used to be linked with Beihai. So, as you can see, the emperors had both water and mountains in their backyard. It is a small mountain, with a huge reputation.

There was a peasant insurgence at the end of Ming Dynasty and the emperor fled here. He finally despaired and hanged himself on one of the trees here. It's always bad luck to the last one.

But you can't blame the decline of a dynasty on just one person, and time passes, and now the area where the emperor tragically ended his life has become a place for fun and games. This is now an open-air Karaoke stage. Anyone can venture up to show off, and if the response of this audience is anything to go by, many people do.

It's like a huge amusement park, where people make their own fun. The atmosphere is contagious. It's a world of middle aged and old people and the songs are popular “oldies” from the fifties, sixties and seventies. It's nostalgia time. But fair enough. Young people go to bars, discos, clubs, and their mums and dads and grandparents come here for some social life and fresh air.

If you don't remember the lyrics, they have it here on sale. It's strange that I just told you that tragic story and now you see how all these people enjoy themselves. This is just a happy land.

Setting as a perfect background for the merry open air party, the little hill of Jingshan was carefully designed. It sits to the back of the Forbidden City and all the five pavilions on top were placed with particular consideration so as to make sure the structures meets its statues. The central one was of unusual big size for a pavilion with a Buddha statues worshiped inside.

Here is the highest point on the axis of the old Beijing, from here you could get a bird's eye view of the old city and the Forbidden City. It's beautiful!

Beautiful it is, especially at sunset. Seeing the Forbidden City so strictly planned along the central axis, we realized that the buildings and planning actually reflect the highly centralized ideology of the feudal society. The strict hierarchy takes concrete form here, and is represented, strangely, in a majestic way.