The Forbidden City is a visible landmark and a point of orientation in the novel’s Beijing scenes. Seen from Tiananmen Square in the low western sun, its red walls and the orange-tiled roof of the Gate of Heavenly Peace retain their colour amid a landscape otherwise drained of it; elsewhere, the Forbidden City is one of the stops in a bus-driver riddle that turns the city into a sequence of changing passengers and destinations.

A landmark beside Tiananmen Square

At Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City enters the scene through its architecture rather than through a visit inside its walls. The sun is low, and its strong light seems to char the colour from the square, leaving the red walls and the orange-tiled roof of the Gate of Heavenly Peace as conspicuous exceptions. The detail makes the landmark a visual anchor in a broad public space filled with kite-flying children, tourists, and marching armed police.

The scene sets the children’s immediate world of open sky and kites against the square’s historical weight: tanks once crossed its paving stones, and the hopes and blood of a generation remain part of its history. The Forbidden City’s coloured walls and roof appear within that present-day view, where the square is at once a place for an ordinary afternoon and a landscape marked by political upheaval.

A stop on a city route

The Forbidden City also appears in a riddle Mei Yuan poses to Margaret Campbell about a bus travelling along Beijing’s number one route. The bus is empty when it stops at the Friendship Store; six passengers board. At Wangfujing, three get off and eight get on. At the Forbidden City, five leave and fifteen board, making the bus busier before it continues to Xidan, where eight get off and ten get on.

The riddle’s point is not the changing passenger count but a fact established at its outset: Margaret is imagining herself as the driver. The Forbidden City thus functions as one familiar stop among several in a practical city itinerary, rather than as an isolated monument. Paired with its appearance across the square, the reference gives the landmark both a monumental presence in Beijing’s skyline and a place in the ordinary movement of the city.