Wow! This is a crowd!

This Forbidden City statue seems

to be saying, "80.000 people?

You've got to be  kidding!"

Two people may be company, but 80,000? Now that's a crowd!

In researching for my next Beijing guide, I came across an interesting statistic. Officials at the Forbidden City reserve the right to close admissions any day that 80,000 people have passed through the gates. 80,000 people? Oh my gosh! That's almost as many people who lived in Bloomington, Indiana; Troy, Michigan, or Bellingham, Washington, in 2010. Those cities came in at just over 80,000 residents each in the last U.S. Census.

The Forbidden City gets lots of visitors, that's for sure. It averaged 10,000 a day on weekdays and 20,000 on weekends when I lived there. It gets 36 million visitors a year, which works out to approximately 10,000 a day. Even then, there were so many people, you had to spend a lot of time waiting in line to peek through the doors in the main halls. I cannot even begin to imagine how crowded it would be with 80,000 people. The article did note the limitation was pretty much limited to holidays, but still...

I have been unable to verify this statistic, so if anyone can, would you please leave a comment? Xiexie. (That's "thank you" in Mandarin.

Are you going to China?

If a trip to China is in your plans, check out my website, Cheryl's China, for tips and suggestions on what to do for your trip. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions about travel in China.