China Beijing -- The Summer Palace - The Great Wall - The Scared Way

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Beijing - The Summer Palace - The Great Wall - The Scared Way -- October 9 - 10 -11, 2013

Beijing is a city of 20 million people. There are 6 lane highways with an additional lane on each side for bicycles and motor bikes throughout the city plus a subway system expanding from 16 lines to 24, regardless the city is one massive traffic jam most of the day. But with 20 million people what else can you expect. One other feature that is not so impressive is the smog. In North America if you try to look directly at the sun with your naked eye, you can't for more than the briefest second, here is Beijing the sun was this reddish/orange ball in the haze that you could gaze at with no problem.

The Summer Palace is one of the loveliest spots in Beijing, to which the imperial court would decamp when the weather was hot. The lake is beautiful with palaces, pavilions and pagodas dotting the hillside, while visitors putter around the lake in small boats. The one outstanding item in the lake is a huge rubber ducky that was donated to Beijing for an event by Hong Kong but has been kept for a longer stay since it has become a popular attraction for the people. Among the boats the one that stands out is an elaborate marble pleasure boat commissioned by the last dowager empress of China.

The Great Wall stretches 4,163 miles from the Yellow Sea to the Gobi Desert. It was meant to defend against invaders from the north. When you stand upon it you have to marvel at the difficulty of building the Wall over such tough Terrain and how difficult it would have been to attack.

After recovering from the steep climb past a number of forts, we had an easier walk along the Sacred Way of the Ming Tombs, also known as the Avenue of Animals, for its paired marble statues of real and mythical beasts. The Sacred Way stretches through the center of the tomb area. Thirteen Ming Dynasty emperors were buried here.

There is little left of the old part of Beijing, but we did have the opportunity to visit a part via pedicab rickshaw. We stopped at the home of a local artist to see how people lived before the onslaught of skyscraper condos. Several generations would live in a house built around an interior courtyard.

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Photos

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The Rubber Ducky

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The dowager empress paid for the boat with funds that were intended for the Royal Navy

Summer Palace
The corridor was constructed as a birthday present so the emperors mother could walk through the gardens protected from the elements

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The corridor is painted with scenes from different Chinese legends

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One of the paintings the artist did that we visited

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Some of our fellow travelers