the globeTROTTERS

This was a big day, we would be visiting the Great Wall of China.  This was one of the top sites of our whole trip.  The group was excited.  We got up early in our Beijing hotel and met up in the lobby.  The closest point to see the wall is several hours drive from Beijing proper.  One of John's relatives had very generously offered to drive us there, most people would have been taking some kind of tourist bus.

We all pile into John’s cousin’s minivan.  It is crazy early, so shortly after driving out of Beijing, most of the group is fast asleep in the van.  The countryside is pretty and the freeway we are traveling on is surprisingly modern.  This road could be in any part of the US.  We reach the first section of the wall after only an hour or so.  At least that’s what our guidebook says.  It went by so fast that I didn’t even see it (you don’t get out and walk around at this point).  It would take another hour to get to the section designated for tourist visits. 

Here are a few facts about the Great Wall:

• The Great Wall is the world's longest human-made structure, stretching over approximately 4000 miles
• It has been estimated that somewhere in the range of 2 to 3 million Chinese died as part of the centuries-long project of building the wall
• The wall was built between the 5th and the 16th century BC to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire
•  At its peak, the Wall was guarded by more than one million men

The section of the wall frequented by tourists from Beijing is known as Badaling.  This section of the wall had a large number of guards to defend China’s capital (Beijing). Made of stone and bricks from the surrounding hills, this portion of the Great Wall is 25.6 ft high and 16.4 ft wide. 

I should mention that it has been raining all morning.  Hard core raining.  We get to the car park that leads up to where you visit the wall and are greeted by tons of entrepreneurial Chinese selling rain ponchos for a dollar.  This place is like Disneyland, there is a huge parking area including a big section reserved for tour buses.  We are there pretty early so the masses haven’t quite descended on the place.  John quickly negotiates with some guy to get us all our ponchos.  We gear up and head over to a western, Disney-style ticket office to get tickets.

Tickets in hand, we schlep it up a hill and make our way to the wall.  The tour buses and crowds have arrived at this time.  Think huge masses of Japanese, each with two cameras.  There are a bunch of Chinese tourist as well.  A number of the Chinese tourists want their picture taken with us on the wall.  We were somewhat of a novelty.  The rain is still coming down, so bad that I left our camera in the car.  We walk up and down the wall in the rain for about an hour and then decide to head back.  This place has such the theme park thing going that they have this crazy luge type ride you can take from the wall back to the parking lot.  We pay to ride this down, it was a little scary in the rain.  Back in the parking lot area we notice that they have some black bears enclosed in a zoo type setup and we pay to get some apple slices which you can lob over a wall to them.  This is kind of sad and then we head back to John’s cousin’s van.  He didn’t come up to the wall with us and has been waiting in the van.  The guy was super cool. 

After visiting the walls we get back into the van and drive over to the Ming Tombs.  There are 13 Ming Dynasty Emperors buried in an area not too far from the Badaling section of the Great Wall.  The tomb complex is crazy big, with the tombs themselves being underground.  It is still raining pretty good but we have a nice walk around the tomb gardens and then check out the stuff underground.

After finishing up at the tombs we eat lunch in a restaurant and then head back to Beijing. 

That night we meet up with John’s in-laws for dinner.  They take us to this pretty swanky private, members only restaurant that John’s father in-law belongs to.  Like most Chinese dinners, the whole family is there, John’s in-laws, cousins, cousins’ kids, etc.  We have a private room at the restaurant and are all sitting around a big table sporting a lazy susan in the middle.  A few people start ordering food, not us of course, we don’t know what the hell to order.  Everything is served family style on the lazy susan.  We all order Tsing Tao beers and sit back to enjoy.  Everything is really tasty, there are a few interesting items.  One that sticks out in my mind is shark fin soup.  This is literally a soup made from with shark fins.  It is a delicacy and is really expensive.  We all try it.  It is pretty good, relatively mild as I remember it.  Dinner is a lengthily affair, with tons of food.  We are at the restaurant for several hours before saying good night and heading back to the hotel.

05/23 

The following day we spend a good amount of time wandering around and shopping on Wangfujing Dajie, an area that has a number of very nice (read expensive) shops that we give a good tour.  One of these is a multi-storey almost department store type setup.  Very nice, very expensive.  You could get all kinds of jewelry, precious stones, vases, etc. in this place.  We spend a few hours wandering around.  For lunch we go to a Muslim restaurant that is similar to fondue except you are cooking the food in water as opposed to oil.  John orders several plates of raw lamb meat and a variety of mushrooms and other veggies that we use chop sticks to dip into the boiling water to cook.  Each plate of meat was different qualities of lamb meat, I think the younger the lamb the more expensive / tasty the meat is.  We were also drinking down some kind of potent rice wine that is similar to vodka.  Good stuff, could strip paint off the walls.

We finish off our day with yet another wonderful massage at our favorite Beijing massage place.  This time we get full body massages.  They cost us around $10 US for an hour and a half.  Sweet. 

Cheers,
Bill