This happens when foreign political leader (a President/a PM of a country) visits Beijing. Beijing is probably the busiest global diplomatic centre now. This is why Beijing's business centres are far from the Tian'anmen square (outside of the second ring road) and that's also why you feel the city is qutie empty near that area. The Tian'anmen squre is just a geographic centre of the city rather than a buiness and commercial centre which is very different from other cities.
Not true...most of the time it's for raising/dipping flag ceremony which happened at the sunrise/sunset time..If it's for foreign leader visit, the restricted area will not be only this street..
95% of black clothing you see in china are security guards, they are not police( they wear same uniform as police but have no Police Ranks on their shoulders) , another 4% you see are traffic police, 1% are police, the green uniform are armed police( Chinese People's Armed Police Force, PAP) , their duty is guarding important places such as this central beijing, with lots of central govertment building are
Yes, this is one of the small disadvantages of living in beijing, sometimes when they need to transfer significant personnels such as head of state or other nation's diplomatic envoy, they need to clear the road, however they cannot reveal the schedule in advance(security reason), leading to people suddenly got stuck on the road because they block the road temperaly. But Beijingers are used to this, and this happnes all the time and is not emergency. And every local people understand the rationale and won't feel anything despite having slight inconvenience when it happens.
You can treat Tiananmen Square as the White House in the United States or Buckingham Palace in the United Kingdom, which is a national or political landmark, so the control there is stricter than in other places. Moreover, drone is not allowed within the Second Ring Road of Beijing, as it is China's political center and, in a sense, a military stronghold. I think you can use drones near the White House or Capitol building, right? It's the same reason. Also, I think you can see that the hutongs near the Forbidden City are all low houses, because there has been a rule since the Ming Dynasty that houses near the Forbidden City cannot be higher than the city walls. And most of those houses are now protected historical buildings that cannot be demolished and can only be renovated.
Tiananmen is more like Capitol Hill the political center of the country, Zhongnanhai is the 'White House', the executive seat of the country. however China's Zhongnanhai rarely host foreign leader since there is no space for a parade square for the honor guards as it is an historic compound. Zhongnanhai was chosen as the seat of presidency by Yuan Shikai, the first "official" president of Republican China. it was part of the imperial grounds just outside the Imperial palace, as such it was never design to serve as a seat of government, it just what the republican can find as a suitable base at the time of the founding since they can't use the imperial palace which the qing dynasty would continue to occupy for years as part of the settlement agreement for transfer of power to the republic. the Tiananmen square we see today would only be build alot later during the communist push to modernise Bejing and it became the new center of political power after it completion, it is more spacious and visible publicly as well as closer to the "center of power" (the old imperial axis of beijing). however the leadership continue to use the Zhongnanhai as residence and office. only the most important of guest like Nixon would go to Zhongnanhai...
I really love your videos mate. But one thing - why do you expect the locals to understand english? I reckon you should be initiating a conversation or transaction with your translator out. Just some feedback, but China is indeed beautiful
As a Finn I found it quite amusing watching you wondering whether the street wendor’s juice was hot or not at the tempereature of -20˚C and your breath vapouring around. You can see the juice steaming or feel the bottle temperature while carrying it if the juice is hot. Apparently, it was not. 😄
The offices of Chinese leaders are located in Zhongnanhai next to the Forbidden City. The Great Hall of the People near Tiananmen Square is often used to receive state visits. The reason for the road closure may be that visiting teams or Chinese leaders need to pass through this section of the road. President Xi has his own exclusive car, and the bus in the motorcade is basically used for the travel of other leaders of the Chinese Central Committee.
I have been to the Forbidden City and the Tiananmen Square...very massive. Well, it's great that you were able to see these two important places in Beijing. Thanks for sharing this clip, Ken. Wonderful to meet up with Steve and lvana in Macau. A nice, spacious and comfy room in Macau. Thanks for the room tour. Have a wonderful weekend.
Green coat/jacket guys are soldiers, meaning literally military soldiers. The regular police are wearing either black or light blue or neon green vest typically and their clothes would have a printed “警察” and “Police” on it. And there are also just security guards, who don’t have much authoritative power and those are who you’d normally see that you may think them as police but they’re actually not.
How to tell if they’re military soldiers or just regular police? Well it’s very simple, just look at their posture. The soldiers are super upright in their way of standing, walking and deliberate on every movement basically, that’s a thing for all Chinese soldiers. And for regular policemen, they are more relaxed and move mostly just like regular people.
Judging by the time of day, maybe you caught up with the flag-lowering ceremony at Tiananmen Square every evening, or the ending of the event in the Tiananmen City Hall , or, just the temporary security measures for state leaders to leave work in the office area. This is a daily routine in BJ, don't worry~
most likely some foreign delegation is visiting. happens a lot and you can tell who by another country's flag next to the chinese one around tiananmen square. you should expect high security because the national congress is right next to the square. guys in green probably military honor guard.
You can not bring a drone into forbidden City it is lterally across the road to Zhong nan hai, a formal imperial garden"中南海 " also now the Chinese equivalent of America white house.
Ken, you’re a nice chap and all but when is it going to become apparent to you that speaking in English to most Chinese vendors, particularly street vendors and expecting them to understand is an exercise in, how can I put this kindly, futility. Of course there’ll be miscommunication as you always seem to state afterwards. Use the translation app on your phone or use sign language.
@@GL-iv4rw Fortunately, Ken's accent and his avoidance of some slang make his English easier to understand. Haha, the first time I heard Ken speak English, I guessed he was German, because he speaks very clearly. It's quite distinctive, just like us when we are learning English. 还好,反而 ken 的口音以及不采用一些俚语,让他的英语听起来更容易听懂一些。 哈哈,我第一次听 ken 说英语,猜测是德国人,咬字很重。就像我们学英语一样,很有特点。 In my childhood, I met many foreigners from different countries. When I was 10 years old, I met four teachers from Germany in Dali, Yunnan. They had a German-English dictionary, and I had an English-Chinese dictionary. With the help of sign language, we taught each other Chinese chess and international chess. Looking back, the first foreigners I had a deep conversation with were actually Germans. It's quite interesting and an unforgettable memory. 童年,我接触过很多来自不同国家的外国人。 在我10岁的时候,在云南大理遇到过四位来自德国的教师。 他们靠着一本德语-英语词典,我有一本英语-汉语词典,外加手语,我们教会了对方中国象棋和国际象棋。 回忆起来,与我第一次深度交流的外国人,居然是德国人。 挺有意思,难忘的回忆。
I lived in Edmonton, Canada for about eight years and that first winter with minus 24 Celsius temperatures (and below) was brutal. It was a very dry type of freezing temperatures so you needed puffy goose down parka coats, ear muffs or wool cap and definitely gloves. I remember it was so cold that I could feel the hairs inside my nose harden up as they froze. The winters were so dry the snow was powder snow and inside the house, you kept getting shocked by all the static electricity.
Green is the Armed Police Force: The full name of the Armed Police Force is the Chinese People's Armed Police Force. After the military reform, it is under the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee and the Central Military Commission, and implements the Central Military Commission-Armed Police Force-troop leadership and command system. Black police: The people's police of the public security organ, which is under the State Council and directly led by the Ministry of Public Security. It is divided into five categories: public security police managed by the public security department, national security police managed by the state security department, prison people's police under the judicial administration system, and judicial police under the court and procuratorate system.
Drones are currently being used as murder weapons in battlefields such as Ukraine and the Gaza Strip. Why did you carry a drone with you to a major political location in China that requires a high level of security, such as Tiananmen Square?
@@paulmilner8452 Would you allow it in front of the White House or in front of the Prime Minister's Office in Downing Street? I understand why the West is in gradual decline. There are many ignorant people like you!!
you probably caught up some politician/officials passing by. the mid-size bus is for some high rank official, yes, in China, high rank officials don't take black cars (which are only for mid-ranked ones), they all take mid-size buses
normally the black uniform you see in China are security, police, or police assistant, some department under state administration also wear black or blue uniform, more than 2/3 of black uniform you meet in daily life not actural police, its hard for forigner to recognize proper police if you cant read Chinese or not live in China, some time I even see forigner recognize railway worker as police, normally police letter will only shows on police uniform, but sometime police assistant or security wear uniform with police letter, due to bad uniform management or mistranslation of uniform maker, the most accuracy way is to check the shoulder straps, a police will have real police rank on it. the green uniform you asked in video is armed police, its half law enforcement half military organization, fire and rescue department in china are also part of armed police. Their uniform looks same to PLA but some difference. the entire military, law enforcement and state administration system are set based on a model learnt from system of USSR. makes most western forigner confuse about all these uniforms.
looking forward to see more of your deleted scenes! Pomegranate is not in the season and its not easy to make the juice out just as orange. It will cost you around 15 if you buy it in Xian for 200ml.
Ken,, no VIPs,, it was only because honor guard march back in to the Forbidden city , so they will cross the left lane first.. so left lane gets open 1st , follow by the right lane .
Tiananmen Square has 2 ceremony for rising and put down the national flag every day. one is in the sunrise, one is in sunset. Every ceremony has 15 mins to close the road. There are at least 100K people to watch this ceremonies every day. There are too many people wants to watch it, if is not controlled it, it may be half million or one million enter the tiananmen square, That is the reason you need to book appointment to go to tiananmen Square to watch. The government need control the numbers of people during this morning and evening time.
I'm not really sure the heavy security check caused by the East Turkestan terrorist attack ten years ago at Tiananmen square, I don't think there was security check many years before.
I dont see anything that you cant show. They blocked the street, and those cars were foreign diplomats visiting. i worked in Beijing during the 2nd half of 1990, at that time China wasnt popular, but still saw this from time to time.
Thank you very much. However, there's nothing in these video scenes that can't be shown. Firstly, about temporary road closures. Beijing is the capital of China, one of its main duties is to host visiting foreign heads of state, national leaders, and so on. Tiananmen Square is a major venue for hosting foreign guests, often holding welcome ceremonies here. There are also the Great Hall of the People, the Monument to the People's Heroes, and so on. At the same time, the place where China's national leaders work is not far from Tiananmen, so some talks are also arranged here. Therefore, Chang'an Street, the name of the road in front of Tiananmen, often has temporary traffic bans. Foreign guests sometimes also visit other areas and give speeches at universities -For example, when the President of the United States came to give a speech, not only were the roads temporarily closed, but we were even notified not to stand by the window or open the window. It is speculated that this is to facilitate the prevention of snipers and protect foreign guests. In addition, sometimes international competitions and large-scale events will also have temporary road closures. Once, I didn't notice an international marathon and didn't plan my route in advance to avoid the competition area, so I had to walk and was delayed for a long time. Since then, Secondly, about the police, here's a simple distinction: Those in dark uniforms are People's Police, also known as "Public Security" (Gong An), meaning "public safety" - they are responsible for maintaining public safety, which is the common sense of "police" that is the same in all countries. Very similar to the police uniform, there is another group of people who are auxiliary police, staff who deal with public security issues, called "Auxiliary Police" (Fu Jing), meaning people who assist the police. They help the police solve some simple problems and do not have law enforcement powers. After all, there are too many people, and the police alone are not enough. Those in green military uniforms are the Chinese People's Armed Police. In China, only a small proportion of ordinary police are armed, and the armed police make up for this deficiency, mainly responsible for anti-terrorism and the defense of important departments. Another one, which is often misunderstood, is "security guards", because their work clothes are often designed very similar to the uniforms of the police and auxiliary police. They are not police, but security personnel hired by enterprises, shopping malls and others to maintain order, and they do not have law enforcement powers. It's indeed easy to confuse, so we generally teach children to distinguish between police and security guards from a young age, haha. 非常感谢。 不过,这些视频场景并没有什么不能展示的。 首先,临时性封路。 北京是中国的首都,一个主要的职责是接待来访的外国元首、国家领导人等等。 而天安门广场,是接待外宾的主要场地,经常在这里举行欢迎仪式。这里还有人民大会堂、人民英雄纪念碑等等。 同时,中国的国家领导人工作的地点,距离天安门不远,所以一些会谈也会安排在这里。 所以,长安街,天安门前这一条道路的名字,经常会发生临时性的禁止通行。 外宾有时候还会去其它地区参观,在大学进行演讲 --比如美国总统来演讲那次,不仅来回的路上会采取临时性封路,甚至被通知不能站在窗口、不能开窗。 推测是为了便于防范狙击手,保护外宾吧。 除此之外,有时候进行国际性比赛、大型活动,也会有临时性封路。 有一次,我没注意到一个国际性马拉松比赛,没有提前规划路线避开比赛区域,结果不得不步行耽误了很久。 从此, 第二,关于警察,简单区分如下: 深色制服的是人民警察,又叫做“公安”(Gong An),意思是“公共安全”--他们负责维护公共安全,就是普遍意义上、各国都一样的“警察”。 与警察的制服很接近,还有一类人是辅助警察,解决治安问题的工作人员,叫做”辅警“(Fu Jing),意思是辅助警察的人。 他们帮助警察解决一些简单问题,没有执法权。毕竟人口太多了,仅靠警察,人手不足。 绿色军服的是中国人民武装警察。在中国,普通的警察只有很少比例配枪,而武装警察是弥补这一点不足,主要负责反恐、重要部门的保卫工作。 还有一种,很容易被误解的是“保安”,因为他们的工作服往往设计得很像警察、辅警的制服。 他们不是警察,是企业、商场等聘请来维持秩序的安保人员,没有执法权。 的确很容易混淆,所以我们一般从孩子还小的时候教会他们区分警察和保安,哈哈
Thank you for the opportunity. Let me explain about cameras and "surveillance". A camera does not equate to "surveillance", there's also "evidence collection". Firstly, Surveillance means someone is watching your every move all the time, like a live broadcast. Evidence collection, on the other hand, is about automatically recording everything for future reference in case of any problems. Most of the time, cameras are in the state of evidence collection. Only when special situations are happening, the police who are responsible for maintaining public security can remotely access the camera footage to view the situation in real time - watching the live broadcast. Imagine cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, etc., where the population exceeds 20 to 30 million, If there is someone "monitoring" behind each camera, watching the "live broadcast", even if each person is responsible for watching multiple cameras, how many people would it take to watch them all? At this point, some people may bring up computer programs, artificial intelligence. There's a distinction here too. Secondly, identity verification: In many examples, each person and each face in the picture has a square frame. This is called "human recognition", "face recognition", which is to distinguish which are human bodies and which are human faces from a static picture, and which are not. Note, it's just "a human face", not "whose face". To identify who a person is, or "whose face", is called "identity verification". It requires the facial feature data of this person to be compared in a target group's facial database. For example, to identify a face as which Chinese citizen, you need to compare it in a facial database of about 1.4 billion people. --It's unimaginable, but you can imagine how terrifying the amount of computation this requires! Of course, it can be optimized: first distinguish between men and women, save half; then estimate an age, and further narrow down the range. However, even so, it's still a terrifying number. So, true identity verification based on faces will only occur in a very small range, such as: People who have bought tickets for today; People staying at this hotel; Foreigners entering on a 144 visa; People who have processed certain services, such as facial recognition payment, taking a bus; People on the blacklist, such as wanted criminals. Just like each of our phones, whether it's iOS or Android, etc., only matches the facial features stored on the phone with the person, to see if it's a specific "this one person". From the above two points, we can see the cause of many misunderstandings. What is most widely used in China is the automatic recognition of license plates, which serves as the basis for traffic violation records. Because you only need to recognize the numbers on the license plate to know the license plate number, unlike identifying a person's identity - which requires comparison in the target database. Identity verification based on faces only occurs in a very small area. For example, many companies require employees to sign in with fingerprints or facial recognition to record the time of work and off work. As for the evidence for retrospection, imagine how much data needs to be stored? How much data does a camera generate in a day? If saved for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, then it needs 30 times, 60 times, 90 times the storage. What about saving for a longer time? If you think about it rationally, it's not hard to understand: If there's no special reason, such as videos not used as evidence, they will automatically expire after a certain period and be overwritten by new content. Also, there's a common misunderstanding involving people who have been legally restricted from high spending by court judgments. These people are not unable to consume, but they can't take planes or high-speed trains, they can't spend money recklessly - because the court has ruled that they need to repay their debts first. They can take cars and ordinary trains. 借此机会,解释一下关于摄像头和”监控“。 摄像头,不等于”监控“,还有”取证“。 首先, 监控,意味着有人随时盯着你的一举一动,类似于直播。 取证,则是自动记录下一切,一旦发生问题,可以回溯。 绝大部分时候,摄像头都是处于取证的状态。 只有特殊情况正在发生时,负责管理治安的警察可以远程调取摄像头的画面,实时查看正在发生的画面--观看直播。 想象一下,北京、上海、重庆、深圳、广州等等,这类人口超过两三千万的城市, 如果每个摄像头后面都有人在”监控“,在观看“直播”,哪怕每个人负责看多个摄像头,需要多少人才能看得过来? 这时,有人要提到计算机程序、人工智能。 这里面还有区别。 其次,身份鉴别: 很多例子中,画面上每个人、每张脸都有一个方形的框框。 这叫做”人体识别“、”人像识别“,是从一张静态画面中区分出哪些是人体、哪些是人的脸,而其它不是。 注意,仅仅是”人的脸“,而不是”谁的脸“。 而识别一个人是谁,也就是”谁的脸“,叫做”身份鉴别“。 需要用这个人的人脸特征数据,在一个目标人群的人脸数据库中进行比对。 比如说,要识别一张人脸是中国的哪一位公民,需要在大约14亿人的人脸数据库中比对。 --无法理解,但可以想象,这需要多么可怕的计算量! 当然,可以优化一下:先区分男女,省掉一半;再估算一个年龄,又能缩小一定范围。 然而,即便如此,依然是一个恐怖的数字。 所以,真正意义上的基于人脸来鉴别身份,只会发生在很小的范围,例如: 买过今天的票的人; 住在这家酒店的人; 144入境的外国人; 办理了某种业务的人,例如人脸识别支付、乘车; 黑名单上的人,例如通缉犯。 就像我们每个人的手机,无论是 iOS 还是 Android 等,只与手机上存储的本人的人脸特征进行匹配,来是不是特定的”这一个人“。 以上两点,可知很多误解产生的原因。 而在中国最普及的是自动识别车牌号,来作为交通违章记录的依据。 因为只需要识别车牌号上的数字就能知道车牌号,而不像鉴别人的身份那样--需要去目标数据库比对。 基于人脸来实现身份鉴别,只会发生在很小的区域。 比如很多企业要求员工用指纹或人脸识别进行签到,以记录上班、下班的时间。 至于用于回溯的证据问题,想象一下需要存储多少数据? 一个摄像头工作一天的数据量有多大?保存30天、60天、90天,则要30倍、60倍、90倍。 保存更长时间呢? 换成理性的你来考虑,也不难理解: 如果没有特殊原因,例如不作为证据的视频,经过一定时间后自动过期,被新的内容覆盖。 另外,还有一个常见的误解,涉及到那些违法被法院判决限制高消费的人群。 这群人不是不能消费,而是不能乘坐飞机、高铁,不能乱花钱 --因为法院裁决他们要先偿还欠别人的债务。 他们可以乘坐汽车、普通列车。
In my childhood, I met many foreigners from different countries. When I was 10 years old, I met four teachers from Germany in Dali, Yunnan. They had a German-English dictionary, and I had an English-Chinese dictionary. With the help of sign language, we taught each other Chinese chess and international chess. Looking back, the first foreigners I had a deep conversation with were actually Germans. It's quite interesting and an unforgettable memory.
Hello Ken. In your prevous videos, you told us that you stayed 15 days visafree in China then you left China and went back in again for another 15 days. Can you please tell us(if you know) whether one can go to Hong Kong or Macau and then go back in to China. And how many days do you have to out of China before going back in again. Thank you very much for your info.
From the Macau video. I don't understand these mini baths in the toilet. Even smaller Asian people would not fit in there. What chance does a farang have?
I guess u ran into the flag lowering ceremony so the road was temporarily closed, and it requires appointment for specifically the ceremony so u got entry deny for having only Tiananmen appointment.(just my guess)~
bro, speaking slowly does not mean someone not knowing English will understand you😂 use the translator or simply learn some Chinese... and Tiananmen square needs appointment every day.
After watching other videos, I thought that ken, as a foreigner, would have a relatively objective impression because he really came to China. However, from your reaction to the security check and road closure in Tiananmen Square, I think you have been greatly influenced by the long-term propaganda of the Western media. If you were in the White House in the United S tates or Buckingham Palace in the United Kingdom when there were police, military, security check and road closure, you might not be as vigilant or unhappy as you were in Tiananmen Square. Can ordinary people use drones in the White House? Whether the use of drones in public places where President Biden is present poses a risk of assassination of the president . Deep down, there's still a double standard.
Because we know people with confirmation bias like you would always make dumb comments after seeing negative click baits. Thanks for corroborating it with your dumb comment. Oh btw, I'm not Chinese... so that's another dumb assumption you've made. 😂
People simply responded and explained what the content creator asked in the video because he didn’t know😜, very kind of the “Chinese” answering it in a respectful manner.
Every morning (sunrise) and evening (sunset) - there is a flag raising and lowering ceremony. The guards who perform this march out from the forbidden city, and cross the road to get to the flag square. As a result, traffic gets closed for a few moments until the guard's mission is completed. RU-vid beijing flag raising ceremony, and you will see it.