Government Center: the Great Hall of the People

After being turned away from the Great Hall for the second time, I began to despair about being able to visit.  The guidebook and the online sources I had read all said that it was open to the public - except when it wasn't. It was just not entirely clear to me when it wasn't. What the guides said was that it was closed to tours during official sessions of the legislature - but these happened only once a year in March for a couple of weeks. Unusual for a western legislature, perhaps but not for a communist Parliament. The decisions are all made by the party higher-ups.  The legislature just shows up, says ‘Aye’ and goes home. So that should not be an obstacle to visiting. The other obstacles are the occasional state visit and performances held in the auditorium.

Our first try collided with the state visit of the Australian PM. It seems all the people we talked to knew for sure was that it was closed. “Come back tomorrow”.  So we did, only we came too late, it seems (11:30 AM). I’m not sure what the conflict was then - school groups were getting in, just not us. The third times a charm, as they say, so this time we planned for an 8:30 AM arrival. Not sure if we got lucky, or what - but we got in.

Of course, this time we had help. We were met at the entrance by the friend, of a friend, of a friend. Our Shanghai friend Professor Ma had introduced us to his Nanjing friend Prof. Hua, whose Beijing friend, Elton, volunteered to accompany us that day. And on that day, getting in was a breeze. It may have had something to do with his language skills. I'll never know.

Look close, he's there...

The first thing that impresses you about the Great Hall is the scale. It is truly massive. The entrance hall is several stories high and hundreds of feet long. It looks like thousands could gather in the foyer. It makes sense. China is a massive country. It's legislative building matches that scale

It was a little surprising after the difficulty we had getting in (you run a rather long gauntlet that takes you around the building before letting you approach the doors) but once inside they pretty much let you have the run of the place. Some of the spaces are cordoned off, but outside of that there was not much control. It seemed anything not cordoned off you could touch, including some nice displays in the various ‘province rooms’.  Each of China's provinces, including Taiwan btw, has a room decorated in its scenery.  Notably absent in the decoration? Overt communist iconography. I can't say if it was ever there but if it was, it's gone now. Mao even has only a peripheral presence, appearing only in a mural decorating one wall of his home province’s room. Much more prominent are the references to China’s long history. Communism represents just 1% of China's history and that's about all the space they get in the Great Hall, as well.