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If you are touring through China and have time enough, go and visit the Beijing Museum. Don’t bother about the Great Wall at Badaling, or the Forbidden City. Neither of them is what they originally were. Much of the Great Wall was rebuilt during the twentieth century. And as for the Forbidden City, which is mainly constructed of wood, well, that has caught fire at least fifty times since it was first erected in 1420; and the Cultural Revolution added to its desecration in the 1960’s.
Forget about those two. Go to the third floor of the Beijing Museum and follow the directions set out on the wall to the left of the elevators. Don’t go during peak times, because you won’t have a chance to see either the Dragon’s Tooth or the Orb of Direction. There can sometimes be a huge crowd and you have to get really close. There is a large magnifying glass set out above each piece. You can only see part of the inscriptions on each one, and even they don’t match up to one another. The rest of the inscriptions have been covered with wax to hide them from the public. The official line is that not even the experts within the government’s employ are aware of the full text of each piece.
They are history. They were there at the birth of China. They are real. And they are insured for one hundred million dollars, each.
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