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| The Forbidden City - Home to Emperors, a place of mysteries for centuries, but no day in this palace was more mysterious than the day we visited, "May Day", May 1, 2003. May Day for China is like our July 4th, and is their largest holiday, normally attracting gigantic crowds to the heart of Beijing. Normally, we would be surrounded here by 25,000 people on a May Day.
Normally. With SARS at its height, however, we stood in the massive outer courtyard nearly alone, with only the footfalls of two unseen policeman behind us and a lone cleaning lady in gloves and surgical mask (below left) sharing the square with us. A private world for so many royal courts became an even more private, eerily silent world in the harsh haze of a sleeping Beijing morning. |
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The nearly empty outer courtyard, above.
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