Slippery Slope

I am ready to go home now. It seems odd travelling so far to spend so little time here, but since work is so intensive and even the 'down time' is not unaffected by networking, I need a rest. And to get back to decent internet access - it is particularly bad this evening and I have not been able to upload to Blip for ages. In the end I have shrunk the image to 640pix and it has still been uploading for 20 minutes.

This carved ramp is in the Forbidden City. The very grand parts one sees photos of were public and ceremonial. Through every gateway there were multiple arches and your rank determined which one you walked through (only the emperor used the central one) and similarly for steps, though there the emperor had a ramp which was often elaborately carved, like this one.

The private apartments are all on a much more human scale and in fact have some of the pokey quirkiness of city streets, which is an odd contrast.