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Published: August 25th 2005
Another beautiful day in Beijing. The sun was out, humidity was low, and it was a nice 30 degrees Celsius.
Badaling Great Wall
Wikipedia Information It seems whenever I am given the choice of taking the easy road and the hard road, I always take the hard road. Such was the case with the Great Wall. We were given two hours to explore the wall, and offered a choice of taking a relatively flat, but crowded, route…or a steep, but less crowded route. Obviously, I took the steep route. I swear, some parts of the route were at 70 degree angles. I damn near had a heart attack. However, when I saw an 80 year old gentleman with a cane making his way up the wall, it gave me strength (and shame). I met up with a Chinese gentlemen and his son making there way up the wall, and although I was sweating profusely and sucking wind, they decided this was a great time for them to practice their English with me. I unintentionally taught them many curses. Once I got to the top, there was a cable car ferrying people back and forth. I swore under my breath, turned
around, and made the trek back down…my pride getting the better of me. My legs were shaking by the time I finally got back down to the bottom. I was rewarded with some pretty nice shots of the wall for all the effort, which was a fair trade in retrospect.
Although I was pretty winded after the walk on the wall, I still had enough energy to buy a nice scroll painting of the Great Wall on rice paper, mounted on silk, with jade weights on both ends.
Sacred (Spirit) Way
This is actually the entrance to the Ming Tombs (which is explained in the next section), and if I may say, and very nice entrance at that. Lots of beautiful trees and sculptures, a very serene place. Milkshake particularly enjoyed hanging out with a kneeling camel.
On the drive between the Great Wall and here we passed tons of mountains that all looked like they had trees planted in organized rows. We inquired what this was all about and Rose told us that these were planted by workers in an effort to beautify the area. They planted into rock. If a tree didn't take hold, they
planted another. We questioned the logic of planting all the trees in a row and Rose took the opportunity to let us know that the thought today in China was that Mao was right 70%!o(MISSING)f the time, and wrong 30%!.(MISSING).their is a certain Senior Manager @ Deloitte who says the same exact thing...hmmm.
Rose then talked to us about how China has changed, and that there is now freedom of religion in China. The dominant religion in China is Taoism, but there are also many Buddhists (which is what Rose is), Muslims, and Christians. I decided to resist asking about the Falun Gong.
Ming Tombs
Wikipedia Information The Ming Tombs are the home to 13 of the 16 emperors in the Ming Dynasty. Only three have been excavated and opened up to the public.
I believe we visited the Ding Ling (could the middle name be Ah?) tomb, the final resting place of emperor Wanli. The trees and walkways outside the tombs were really peaceful. The tombs are supposedly designed in the Confucius style.
However, the tomb itself was kind of a disappointment. Although there is much history here, there really aren’t many physical artifacts
left. As part of the Cultural Revolution by Mao, the Red Guard came here and burned all of the contents of the tomb, as it represented the old imperial China. By and large, all that is left is the empty tomb itself. However, it is pretty amazing that they were able to construct a tomb 27 meters underground, with arched ceilings, using giant marble blocks. The tomb also had these cool self-locking doors, using stone slabs that dropped into a depression in the floor when the vault was sealed. Another thing that piqued my interested was the large mounds of money that were in the tomb…with no one guarding it. I thought of it as the world’s first ATM.
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Diane
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Photos
Hey there, great photos...BUT you're not in any one of them. You need to get someone to take YOUR picture to show that you've been there :) Glad youre trip is going well!