Guarding Mao

This picture of Mao is on the huge gate leading from Tiananmen Square to the Forbidden City. The square is huge and you have to go through airport style security to get into it. It's an odd place. It's got busy roads at either end of it, a visible police presence and people milling around taking photos of their kids. It doesn't have the relaxed vibe of other city squares, for example the one in Ulan Bator, 

Watching the news on TV from there in 1989 had a big impact on me. I was a teenager and I just couldn't understand what I was seeing or why it was happening. 

In the afternoon I went to the Temple of Heaven - a park with a collection of religious buildings where the Emperors went to pray. The extra is of one of the buildings.