Beijing, China - Forbidden City & Acrobats

Today I caught a very crowded local bus (like phone booth packing) to Tianamen Square to go to the "Forbidden City". Fortunately it is no longer forbidden. It is huge, 140,000 square meters (a meter is about a yard in length). A lot of it is under restoration, but it is still impressive.

In the evening I went to an acrobatic show. I enjoyed it a lot, but it was definitely a different entertainment experience. Some of the acrobatic feats were amazing (a man doing a one-handed handed stand on top of another man's head), but the auditorium was not full and the audience was not all that enthusiastic. Maybe during a sold out night it would have been quite different. It also seemed that the performers pushed themselves to the limit and beyond. Pushed to the extent that there were a couple of falls. Neither of them appeared to cause any injuries, but it let you know that these people were really at the extreme extent of their (and probably any human's) abilities.