Monday, March 18, 2019
Beijing and the Great Wall of China
This morning we met in the
restaurant for a breakfast buffet and then scurried to the mini-bus at 7:00am. Beijing
was in the beginnings of rush hour traffic! We turned the corner and
experienced a Chinese car accident. One commuter ran into the side of another
and the one that was hit refused to move until the police arrived. We were
stuck for about 25 minutes. The facial expressions were our
entertainment…loving every minute of our adventure!
Chinese car company....BYD...Build Your Dream...What a marketing idea! Blue plates indicate gas driven cars that must adhere to certain days that they can be on the road. Drivers were expected to take public transportation on the non driving days.
Larry and I were in awe all
morning at the way Beijing had changed. Signs in English and Mandarin (now the
two official languages of The Republic of China). We were here 18 years ago in
2001…. We saw no written English and
spoken English was just as rare. To go anywhere, we had to have it written in
Mandarin to give to the taxi cab driver….needless to say, we didn’t wonder far
from our guide, Dr. Jim, a professor from the University of Kentucky who grew
up in Beijing.
Beijing today was neat and
clean. Citizens swept the streets as we passed by. There were tons of tall
skyscrapers and the hodgepodge of motorbikes, bicycles, scooters, cars, taxis
and three wheeled trikes everywhere. They seemed to move smoothly….somehow.
Howard told us that 100,000 car accident deaths occur in China in a year….we
understood how that could happen with the conglomerate of vehicles merging and
horn blowing.
Larry and I surprised at
the miles and miles of orchards and trees that lined the highway on the way to
the Great Wall. They were definitely not here 18 years ago. Back then we
observed undeveloped scrub land with tiny little gardens, sparsely placed
throughout the countryside.
We saw the makings of a ew metro train heading along the highway. There was not much development yet in the
areas that the metro/train tracks were heading. The government surely was
planning for future expansion north of the city way, way in advance. It was
quite interesting to see how advanced this area had become in such a short
amount of time.
When we arrived at the Great
Wall, our driver dropped us off and we headed into a complex that was brand
new. The last time we had visited the Great Wall, the streets were lined with temporary
tents, full of merchandise to sell to visitors. Today there were fancy
buildings, restaurants, a hotel, two trams to the top of different sections of
the Wall, a toboggan ride down the mountain and lots of modern restrooms….still
with squat toilets. We were thrilled to witness all the modernization of the
entrance and surrounding areas of the Great Wall….and construction was still in
progress.
We rode the tram to the top
and then began hiking to the 13th sentry guard station.
The views
were spectacular!
The wall was UNBELIEVABLE!
Several walls were being built as early as the 7th
century BC; these later joined together and made bigger, stronger, and unified
are now collectively referred to as the Great Wall. Especially Famous is the
wall built between 220-206BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.
Little of that wall remains. Since then, the Great Wall has on and off been
rebuilt, maintained, and enhanced; the majority of the existing wall was
reconstructed during the Ming Dynasty.
How did they ever carry all the
stones, bricks, and mortar up those mountains?
Our tickers were thumping pretty
good going up and down the steep steps and even steeper walkways along the top
of the wall.
IT WAS AN INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCE…even for our second time around.
We took about a thousand
pictures as we hiked toward the 20th sentry guard station before
turning around and heading back for the tram on the 14th sentry
guard station.
We passed through a mammoth amount of shopping stalls…all seemed
to have the same merchandize….miniature Buddha’s, trinkets, silk embroidery
pictures, and items way too big for our luggage. What a great day at the great
wall!
We boarded our minibus at
3:00pm for the two hour ride back to the city. We passed by many villages with outdoor workout equipment. Apparently the
government has put these in each town encouraging villagers to exercise every
day. I’m sure this improves the local’s health and helps to keep illness
down. Our group met for a Peking Duck
dinner at 6:30pm down the street from our hotel.
We had another restaurant circular table with stir
fried rice, shrimp, pork, chicken, duck, cauliflower, boc choy, tofu, broccoli,
duck soup, greens and a peanut appetizer, and a few other items…it is hard to
remember everything that passed by on the lazy Susan. The conversation was
lively, but it sure got quiet when the food came out.
We had a wonderful day
together and were looking forward to another exciting adventure beginning
tomorrow at 9:00am.
Blossoms were peeking out at the first sight of spring
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