Last stop Beijing.   We’ve arrived in the deep white, miasmic haze of the polluted capital city.   Our guide introduced the pleasures of Beijing by telling us about the poor state of the ladies’ lavatories and the likelihood of being scalped on Tiananmen Square.

We walked across Tiananmen Square:-

Through to the Forbidden City.   Initially I was sceptical.   But when we were allowed through a private door to an area occupied by the concubines and young princes and went into rooms unoccupied for a century at least, there was more of a sense of its history pre-Mao, before the Cultural Revolution, when Reginald Johnston taught the young Emperor Puyi to play tennis.

Mao hangs over the entrance:-

Soldiers guard it:-

I liked the detail:-

This was the second courtyard:-

Somewhere to sit:-

Then we went into the more private bit where the concubines lived:-

This was the door:-

The private quarters behind the door:-

And the courtyard beyond, where the paint had peeled and the surfaces were less restored:-