TIANANMEN SQUARE

I was in New York City last week, and now I'm in Beijing. From one global city to another, a western metropolis and an eastern metropolis, both giving off a pulse that affects the entire planet! I'm staying on the outskirts of the Forbidden City, which is basically smack-dab in the middle of Beijing. Tiananmen Square sits just south of that, and is surrounded by staunch government buildings and scattered with noble monuments. With all of this nationalism and history located at the heart of Beijing, it's like the center of the Chinese universe. The whole area is quite an expanse, and I spent most of my first day exploring by foot. My hostel is just north of the Forbidden City, and after heading south around the outer walls I wound up in Tiananmen Square. Entry into the square requires a security check and a bag scan, and every lamp post is wrapped with cameras pointing in all directions (you can see one in the picture on the right). There are no places to sit, so people just kind of float around snapping photos and looking at things. The smog was heavy that day, and the late afternoon sun blanketed Tiananmen Square in a warm haze. Despite the fact that it was a cold winter's day in the middle of the week, the square was crawling with people, giving life to the stolid concrete prairie. It's a huge attraction, and people flock to Tiananmen Square in Beijing just as they do to Times Square in New York City, although I couldn't think of a more opposite space, both squares resting at the heart of their respective countries, one built around the ideals of Communism and the other representing the epitome of capitalism.