Tian'anmen Square...

That was the day I made history, my personal history by setting foot on the square where the massacre that killed hundreds of people in 1989 happened. Seriously, when I was there I couldn't understand what the hoo-haa was all about. It was just a square, an empty place suitable for peaceful demonstrations to be held. Pinky and I were excited as well no doubt it was cold. The sun wasn't helping at all. There was no heat from the sun. I wonder was that the same sun that shone brightly and sent oven-hot heat to Malaysia. Frankly speaking, I was so excited, I was in a snapping frenzy, snapping at almost the same things over and over again, thinking that the buildings behind me would adjust itself a little here and there. That was our tour guide. I couldn't remember his name. On the first day of our tour, he gave us a really good impression of himself. He was very good with history-telling but I was one lousy listener. Almost at every minute, when I thought I could really understand, then he added a few idiomatic phrases here and there which made me see question marks spilling out from the sky and falling all over the place. In the end, I decided not to pay much attention to what he was saying, whatever Chinese words that chose to enter the ears and went straight to the brain, those were the words that I could remember. I thought I can come back and write a really good post on Beijing, with all the histories, the folklore's and whatnot's.... but come to think about it, if you really want a detailed history of the place, wikipedia has everything there. That stone monument erected out of nowhere in the middle of the square was the Monument of the People's Heroes. I think there were names printed on the monument of the fallen soldiers during the Tiananmen Square Massacre... was that so? Sorry if it was the wrong information but I heard that the square was too empty, so a fengshui master asked Chairman Mao to erect a monument right there. Fengshui masters play important roles in the construction of buildings in the land of my forefathers. That was the Great Hall of the People. In our tour list, we were supposed to be touring in that place but sad to say, on that day, a major meeting was held where all the government top guns were there, having a really major discussion over the election of the new Chairman. I don't even know who was the next chairman after the death of the great tyrant Mao Zedong. I read his biography and you should read 'The Wild Swans' to understand what happened in China during the reign of Chairman Mao. Hey, I'm not talking about the country, it's the history of the country and it can be found in printed copies. The major meeting has been going on for two days so too bad, we couldn't go in there. I wasn't complaining though. That was the National Museum of China. It wasn't in the list of places to visit neither do I want to visit the museum if everything was written in Chinese. The museum looked kind big from the outside, if I were to have a walk in the museum, it would take me the whole day. I saw the translation of Tian'anmen Square as the Gate of Heavenly Peace. It was just outside the Forbidden City. It seems that the people of the country worshipped the ground that the former Chairman walked on. He was remembered and to be remembered. His body was embalmed at the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. It was a failed embalming of the corpse unlike that of another wealthy lady in China. That lady's corpse was not decomposed but Mao Zedong's body was decomposed due to too much usage of chemicals. Therefore, if ever you visited the Mausoleum and see that you're not able to enter due to some renovation work in progress, which happened once too frequent enough, it was because the professionals need to change the traditional medicine used to fill up as the internal organs. That was what the tour guide said. Hey, my Chinese wasn't that bad until I couldn't understand a single word. I just can't read and write. I can understand pretty well. If I have quoted wrongly regarding this matter, please go look for the tour guide who told us that story. It's nice to see the flag of the country raised high in the sky. The traffic congestion in Beijing was really bad. Thank God that the we were not stuck in the traffic jam for hours without moving an each.