Yongle Palace

#chinatravel In the stillness of late morning, Yongle Palace stood open to the sky low rooftops stretched wide, casting soft shadows across the stone. There were no signs pulling us in, no tour groups or banners, just a long quiet corridor and the feeling that time moved differently here. We walked slowly through the hall, where the figures on the walls seemed to watch without watching serene, weightless, endlessly detailed. Nothing told us what to think or feel. But we felt it anyway: the calm of a space that didn’t need to explain itself. Dust floated in beams of sunlight; a bird called in the distance, sharp and sudden against the stillness. We sat for a while on the edge of a low step, not speaking, letting the quiet fold around us. There was nothing dramatic. #china #travel