Tian An Men Square

Tian An Men Square is the second largest city square in the world. It is most famous for Tank Man and the protests of 1989. It was originally built in 1651. In 1958 it was expanded and has been expanded four times since then. There is not much in the square itself but has history at every corner.

Panoramic view I got of the square.

The main entrance into the Forbidden City.

The National Museum of China.

Great Hall of the People. It serves as the People's Republic of China(PRC)

Parliament building.

Monument to the People's Heroes.

Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. We were going to try and see his body but the line was ridiculously long. The small portion of the line you see there on the bottom right was just the beginning! It stretched for at least 500 feet and then turned the corner and went on some more!

Sculpture outside of Mao's Mausoleum.

Army boys getting ready for a shift change in the square.

After checking out the square, we headed over to Wang Fu Jing Shopping District to check out some stores and get something to eat. The main street has all types of expensive stores from clothes to watches to shoes. We wandered down some of the side streets that had tons of cheap junk and things to eat.

Pigeon

Lamb bones

Scorpions, sea horses, and other small bugs!

They also had starfish. I really wanted to try one of these scorpion skewers but they were fucking expensive for one stick and in the end I'm sure I would have hated it.

The cool part was that most of them were still alive and moving on the skewers. I watched a guy pull them out of a bucket and jam them on the stick while they

 thrashed around!