After a few lines, and several minutes being jostled by other visitors to the Forbidden City, we finally made it inside.
It's really, really big with 9,999 rooms (one shy of the number for divinity and perfection), and was home to the emperors of China from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. There are various courtyards, rooms for the emperor, the empress, the emperor's concubines, family, servants, etc etc etc. Many of the smaller rooms have been converted into museum exhibits for various artifacts (porcelain, jade, musical instruments), but the larger central rooms, those used by the emperor, empress, and concubines, have been preserved. However, it's difficult to see most of these rooms for any length of time because 1) most of them are not very well lit, but mostly 2) everyone else wants to see them too, and there are a lot of people to see them. But because the palace is so big (wikipedia has it listed as 720,000 square meters, which is roughly 178 acres), it doesn't feel too, too crowded walking from section to section. It's only when they're something of particular interest/historical significance does the jostling crowd appear.
