We tried again to buy bananas this morning but the lady in front of the banana stall just looked incredulous for a while and refused to sell anything. A few people were summoned to stare at us, and we finally came away with the fruit. On the subway the lady selling a puppy from her handbag yesterday had been replaced with four people selling litters of tiny dogs from holdalls. There was one that looked like a tiny tiger crossed with a boxer dog, complete with black stripes. Mikey wouldn't let me take any home even though they would have been happy in my pocket for the next 56 days. I know they would, because they told me.

We joined the queues of people entering the Tiananmen Gate underneath the giant portrait of Chairman Mao and pushed through into the crowds. It was a very hazy day, and even buildings 50 feet away were pale and washed-out. It gave the whole place a very flat and unreal feeling, which was nice for the atmosphere but a shame for the photos. We then picked up the audio guides to the Palace, which was an excellent series of narrations by Roger Moore. He kept saying things like, "Look at the designs on the ceiling. Aren't they marvellous?"

The Forbidden City is a huge walled compound that used to be the residence of the Emperor and his wives, concubines and aides, and is now a museum of wonderfully-restored buildings and beautiful squares. The whole thing is a series of ten or so giant wooden gates and halls in a straight line, flanked by lower buildings which would have been accommodation areas. There are marble staircases, wonderful yellow tiled roofs, plenty of wood and red lacquer and great paved courtyards. We walked the whole way through while Roger Moore and some flutes accompanied us. There were hundreds of thousands of Chinese tourists in their tour group hats, and I'm going to have to apologise to all the Japanese people I offended when I said in Hong Kong that they were the rudest bunch of tourists in the world. Nope, that honour goes to the Chinese, who are vicious and singleminded and totally oblivious to the presence of anyone else. They push and elbow people out of the way, but only if they acknowledge you first. Otherwise they just walk through you. They stand in front of every single camera and sometimes actually manhandle you out of the way, which is quite a feat when the old ladies are often barely tall enough to reach my shoulders. The old ones are the worst offenders, mostly because I would feel bad if I pushed back and knocked one over, but if I just stand my ground and puch back I just get bruised. They have a knack of targetting with their elbows. I really couldn't believe their behaviour and for a while at least it was quite funny.

The other funny thing was that someone wanted their photo taken with me, so it's not just Mikey who's a tourist attraction now! We have been stared at a lot, and sometimes whole groups whisper and then heads turn to look one by one. It's still a novelty, so we don't mind, and it's all been done in a friendly way.

The Forbidden City is undergoing restoration at the moment, so, like so many places we've been to on this trip, a lot of things were swathed in scaffolding. I think it must be a start of preparations for the Olympics here in 2008. But to offset the hammering and drilling and the ugly green canvases over everything, there was a photography exhibition round the edges of the courtyards (which, to be honest, also interfered with the photographs we wanted to take). Big grey boards held giant enlargements of incredible photos by international artists. Lots of them were of gorgeous scenery, in which case the photographer was just in the right place or at the right angle at the right time, and others were only impressive because they were six feet tall and in an exhibition, which always gives me hope! I've decided I want to be a professional photographer when I grow up, or a saxophonist in a rock band. I think the photographer is the easier option as it seems to involve going to really cool places with a camera and that's much easier than learning to play the saxophone and look cool in sunglasses. Anyway, all the photographs in the exhibition were wonderful and it took quite a while to walk round them all. Occasionally the builders on roofs would all stop work, call hello to us and then wave when we looked up. They seemed pleased when we returned the greetings!

There were a lot of steps and staircases and some bridges over a meandering river. The gates were more like houses, with ornately painted roofs and windows and steps up to them. There was red lacquer (which faded to pink in the haze) on the doorways and walls. One gate or palace melded into another after a while, but there was always a lovely view. I particularly liked the corners of the courtyards where all the roofs met in yellow glazed tiles and dragon statues. In one of the doorways was a box with a particularly auspicious Chinese symbol painted on it, and every single tour group took the moment we passed it to join us. Everyone wanted to touch the red box and gold lettering, so the crush was rather uncomfortable, and we were attacked from both sides. It didn't help either that like all temple and palace doorways there was a large step in the middle of it, and old ladies were stumbling over one another in their bid to be there first. We only just escaped with out lives.

At the end of all the paved areas was the Imperial Garden and it really felt like we had entered another world. Little paths and fences separated tall pine trees and fake mountains of knobbly rocks and little pagodas. We braved a pot of instant noodles in the garden restaurant which was actually rather good, not like I imagine slimy-looking pot noodles to be at home. By this time some of the haze had cleared and so had some of the crowds, so we walked slowly back to the main entrance. The sun was setting slowly and we had avoided eating too much today so that we'd have plenty of room for the duck, so we entered the fray at the doorway and pushed out onto the street.

I was accosted almost immediately by a couple wanting their picture taken with Chairman Mao, and in that instant I lost Mikey. About ten minutes later, after wading through crowds and subways, we saw each other across four lanes of traffic and were reunited in the underpass. Aaaaaah. We tried to watch the sunset flag-lowering in Tiananmen Square but we were eventually pushed out by old women with freshly-sharpened elbows.

We walked around the square for a bit, avoiding the souveneir sellers and the girls that want us to see their exhibition in the gallery. We've actually come up with a thwart for that one based on information that they've given us: 'Oh yes, we saw it yesterday! What a wonderful exhibition of traditional crafts and caligraphy. We even bought one of the paintings to take home with us when we go.' Easy when you know how.

There was a polite 'excuse me' from behind us, and a rather camp young man clutching a newspaper asked us if we could explain words in a newspaper article. He'd underlined several ambiguous phrases in a speech made by Tony Blair about countering terrorism, and the guy, whose name we never found out, was confused by the idea that English words have different meanings depending on their context. We tried to explain as best we could and then, for an hour, he chatted to us and asked us questions. He spoke excellent English, albeit in a formal and roundabout way, using words in a more literal sense which was entertaining. He concentrated a little too much on questions about the 'pleasures of a legitimate and legally-recognised marital union' but he was very pleasant and did not once ask for money. I was on constant watch for that, and we altered our story based on experience - we never say that we're travelling for months, only that we are on a hard-earned holiday. It's obvious enough that we can afford to leave home and come away, any more than that and people expect money just to fall out of our hands. But he didn't ask for anything. He even said a few interesting things that I'd heard before but wasn't sure about such as how, in the west, we consider the future to be ahead of us and the past behind; in China (and I think in Japan and the East in general) the future is behind and the past is ahead because you can see the past as it's already happened. He also said that our images would be imprinted on his mind despite the fact that we may never meet again, which was funny. He was serious. And, all things considered, a nice guy. We managed to make excuses after fifty-five minutes of standing in the dark and cold discussing English politics and language, and the guy even offered to buy us subway tickets to save us having to struggle with the Chinese words. We finally convinced him that it wasn't necessary and managed to get away. We stopped at an internet cafe to get some feeling back into our limbs.

Then we walked the short distance to the duck restaurant and we were met by a queue stretching down the road further than we could see. A man in a suit suggested we make a reservation for tomorrow night, which we did, and then took us to the other branch of the restaurant over the road. We had dumplings, a local speciality, which were lovely, and a beef dish and something else. Our attempts at ordering rice were fruitless. Outside the restaurant, a man had set up a stall to sell all the duck carcases from the restaurant! After supper I confirmed my suspicions that the citrus fruits on all the stalls were in fact satsumas, and I bought a sackful. Then we went back to the hotel. Since we don't have a room key, the reception man has to open the door. We found that whoever had 'cleaned' the room (we use that word loosely because they haven't actually cleaned yet, just moved the bin and eaten our biscuits) had also locked the bathroom from the inside so that we had to get the man back up to open the door. He told Mikey quite sternly to be careful in future, but we just let it go.