Every morning, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, hundreds of thousands of people watch the ritual of raising the Chinese flag over Beijing's main square, Tiananmen. Everything happens in a strict sequence, verified to the second, the soldiers of the National Liberation Army raise the flag to a thirty-meter height, chiseling out no more and no less in a minute, but exactly one hundred and eighty steps.
All guidebooks say that Tiananmen Square is the first place to go in Beijing, as there are a huge number of attractions related to the history and culture of the Chinese people. But I left it for last.
Sixty-one football fields or a million people could fit in the square at the same time. It stretches for almost nine hundred meters in length, and its width is half a kilometer.
For more than five centuries, Tiananmen has been a place of public gatherings, it is here that all cultural events are held today, Beijing people come here on a day off to fly kites.
This square got its name from the Tiananmen Gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace), which is the main entrance to the Forbidden City. But most of the other sights belong to later periods and are symbols of communism. In 1977, the mausoleum of Mao Zedong appeared here. Also on the square is the building of the People's Assembly, the Chinese History Museum, the Museum of the Revolution, the Opera House, and in the center there is a huge monument dedicated to the national heroes of the Republic of China.
To fully appreciate the scope of Tiananmen, I visited her in the evening before the flag lowering ritual.
After a rich program of traditional Chinese sights, the square brought me back to my "short-lived Soviet" childhood.
All guidebooks say that Tiananmen Square is the first place to go in Beijing, as there are a huge number of attractions related to the history and culture of the Chinese people. But I left it for last.
Sixty-one football fields or a million people could fit in the square at the same time. It stretches for almost nine hundred meters in length, and its width is half a kilometer.
For more than five centuries, Tiananmen has been a place of public gatherings, it is here that all cultural events are held today, Beijing people come here on a day off to fly kites.
This square got its name from the Tiananmen Gate (Gate of Heavenly Peace), which is the main entrance to the Forbidden City. But most of the other sights belong to later periods and are symbols of communism. In 1977, the mausoleum of Mao Zedong appeared here. Also on the square is the building of the People's Assembly, the Chinese History Museum, the Museum of the Revolution, the Opera House, and in the center there is a huge monument dedicated to the national heroes of the Republic of China.
To fully appreciate the scope of Tiananmen, I visited her in the evening before the flag lowering ritual.
After a rich program of traditional Chinese sights, the square brought me back to my "short-lived Soviet" childhood.
Translated automatically from Russian. View original
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