The Great Wall & The Forbidden City..

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WOW, I’m not sure what words can do these too justice, so I’m simply going to leave it at that for now and say ‘wow’.

They were both great but I think I liked (or should I say appreciated) the Great Wall more. I didn’t realise it until I was told on the tour (pardon my ignorance) but it was built over three different Chinese dynasty’s (literally one top of each other) and was designed to keep the Mongolians out as they were nomadic in nature and feared by the Chinese.

And for those of you who don’t know this thing stretches about 8000 km’s long too across the top of China and averages about 15ft tall in most places. Now that’s a big wall and a lot of work to build it! Having walked up and down a section of it for about 6 km’s I could only imagine how hard it was to actually build it. I can just imagine the first guy thinking to himself after the emperor told him of his grand plan… “you want to do what..??”

In term of seeing the Great Wall there is different sections you can visit out of Beijing. I decided to go on a proper tour and wanted to see an ‘original’ section of wall that hadn’t been restored like a lot of places closer into town which almost look brand new. As such it was three hour bus ride each way for me out to a place called Saratani, but well worth it I might add. I had vision’s of thousands of tourists clambering all over the wall but when I got there I was quite surprised to only see about 100 other tourists which made it even better.

Over all I covered a total of 11 of those ‘turrets’ which is how everyone seems to define their visit to the wall. On the way down I was also pleased to stumble across a ‘flying fox’ that saved you a 2km walk back to the bus. And don’t worry it’s not actually on the wall that would be way to tacky, its on the path you use to get up and down there. So I paid my $40 RMB (about AUD$8) and went for a fun ride all the way down to the bottom. You can see one photo of me about to do it, up strapped up in the harness.

A couple of days earlier I also visited the Forbidden city which is also a day out in itself. Its located smack bang right in the middle of town and stretches out for over a mile long. Just after walking through the gates I was greeted by a very good English speaking guide who offered me his services which I normally would have turned down, but this day I decided to take him up on his offer. I had a good vibe about him and it wasn’t too expensive. He was charging $100 RMB for a 2 hours tour which is about AUD$20. So off we went exploring and he really did offer me a wealth of information about the place.

A couple of points of interest really caught my attention (you’ll see why in a second); first the emperor could have as many ‘concubines’ as he liked (some had thousands) and once they had been with the emperor so to speak they were never allowed to leave the forbidden city again for the rest of their life even if the Emperor died, interesting hey. Also for males to work and live in the Forbidden City (especially in or near the concubines) they had to be nueted!... eeekk. Not my cup of tea, but each to there own hey!

Oh and I nearly got scammed big time by a young Chinese girl too. As I was leaving she approached me and wanted to walk with me and practice her English. Apparently this happens all the time, they sit there waiting for tourists to come out etc. Anyway she was really very nice, quite young and had a very plausible story about how she was in town for a week as a student and didn’t know anyone. Basically she wanted to practice more English and have a ‘drink’ somewhere around the corner. To me it just didn’t seem right (almost like it was too easy) and I knew something was up. Now don’t get me wrong it wasn’t like the normal proposition you get in down town Bangkok on the streets, this one was different, but still it didn’t seem to sit right in my head so I politely said no about 4 times and walked away after she insisted I took her phone number and she got mine (well a fake one at least).

Anyway you wouldn’t read about it. But I had literally just got back to where I was staying to meet some friends for a drink when I read a warning notice on the wall outside their room. Basically it said the following

“Warning: If you are approached outside the Forbidden City by young women wanting to have a drink and practice their English this is a scam. When it is time to pay for your drink it is not uncommon to be charged up to $4000 RMB (about AUD$800) per drink. Please take caution.

Mmmmm, as you can see, I was lucky hey. On another day at another time I might have said yes. Who knows what techniques they use to get the money out of me too….

Anyway overall, I had a very nice trip to Beijing with some wonderful things to see. I could have easily spent another week in town and still not seen everything. It will be very interesting to see how it continues to grow up over the next 10 years.

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