Happy learners are good learners! A blog for and by LFM pupils in Moscow.

Last year, during my holiday, I was in China with my sister and my grandmother. There was a place which I specially loved, the Forbidden City.

A bit of history and description…

The Forbidden City was the Chinese Imperial Palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It is located in Beijing, the capital of China, and it’s now a museum. It was built in 1406 to 1420, the construction took fourteen years, the complex consists of 980 buildings and covers 720 000 m³ including 500 000m³ of the gardens.

For almost 500 years, it served as the residence of emperors and their suite. Between 1420 and 1911, a total of twenty-four emperors have lived in the Forbidden City. The Palace Museum was a ceremonial and political center of the Chinese government. The museum exemplifies the traditional Chinese architecture.

In 1987, the Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site and, the UNESCO listed it as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. The Forbidden City is the world’s largest surviving palace complex; it consists of 980 buildings with 9999 bays of rooms (actually, 8704 rooms according to a study).The number 9999 is explained by the fact that, in the Chinese tradition, only their gods had the right to build a palace of 10 000 rooms. People trying to get closer as they could to their ideal of the perfection. Among the Chinese, the number nine is a symbol of longevity, and the number 10 000 symbolically represents “infinitely uncountable”.

The Forbidden City was designed to be the center of the ancient and walled city of Beijing. This is enclosed in a larger, walled area called the Imperial City, and the Imperial City is enclosed by the Inner City. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, some damage was done to the Forbidden City as the country was swept up in a revolutionary zeal, but now, there is a sixteen-year restoration project to repair and restore all buildings of the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City is surrounded by a wall whose is about 8 meters high and 7.5 meters large. The wall has served as both defensive wall and retaining the walls of the palace.

Today, the Forbidden City is one of the most visited sites in China.

 My impressions about the Forbidden City…

The Forbidden City is a very special and beautiful  place.The chinese architecture is wonderful and we can particularly see it in the Forbidden City ! I like this place, because, when we are in the Forbidden City we can feel the Chinese History and this is very interessant. This place can show us the majesty of the chinese and the power of the emperors and the chinese persons who built this masterpiece.