Zhongshan park is located between the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. It's nicely done up, with attractive buildings, plants, landscaped gardens, flower and orchard displays, and a small museum with fossils, rocks, crystals and so forth. There's a small fee to enter.
 Zhongshan park flower |
 a very shiny sign |
 Zhongshan Park lake |
At the Gate of Heavenly Peace, a group of women were very keen on being photographed with Peter. We couldn't work out if it was his venerable white beard that was the attraction, or his obvious foreignness, or just sex appeal.
 Mao watches over the gate |
 with one woman |
 with another |
 Tiananmen Square |
Some "art students" tried to decoy us from the National Museum into an art gallery, but we managed to escape. The Treasures display had some amazing items, but pretty much no interpretation of them. An exhibition on Zheng He was more modern in presentation.
 an army memorial |
 on of the treasures |
 a model junk from the Zheng He exhibition |
We walked to the Grand Beijing Hotel (which only changed travellers' cheques for guests), then to Oriental Plaza and Wangfujing Daje, where we looked around a silk shop and then had Peking Duck in the Qianjude restaurant. There were long queues and a wait here, and half a duck wasn't really enough for two of us.
Afterwards we visited the Foreign Language Bookshop and grabbed a snack from the Donganmen night market.
Next: the Summer Palace
Previous: the Forbidden City
Up: Beijing