The Great Wall and Others!

As one of the major attratcions of the world, the Great Wall was a site I couldn't wait to see. It was a grand and awesome feature. Even now it is impossible to believe that something this large could be built by people. It goes to show how good the engineering skills of the Chinese were at the time - as well as how long term their thinking was.

Some quick facts:

• Entire construction took over 2000 years (hard to imagine anyone taking on such a project now!!!)
• Stretches about 5660 kms (a bit longer than New York to London!!!!)
• Took one million people to build (equivalent to a fifth of China's working age popluation at that time)
• Also shows how powerful the Emperors of China were - and how much respect they commanded! As well as how much they feared the Mongolians!

Obviously we weren't going to see the entire wall - so we just walked on a portion of it - known as the Mutianyu Section. This particular section was rebuilt during the Ming dynasty (around 1569). The entire section is on top of a hill - so it was necessary to climb up the hill to see the wall. For the less active (lazy?) among us there is also a cable car, and a chairlift as an alternative to climbing. I myself climbed as I believe it allows you to appreciate the difficulty of building the wall much better. If climbing empty handed is hard enough, imagine the effort reqiured to carry the bricks to actually build the wall!!! I think donkeys were used for this though.

The scenery around us was quite good - but as it was winter, all the trees were bald! It would have been an awesome sight it there was either snow, or if the foliage was present on the trees - but alas no such luck! Though a major benefit of this season is that there were not many tourists and so we had a large portion of the wall to ourselves!)

Along the Wall are many watchtowers and turrets (is that the right word?). Most of this section has been preserved really well - though there have been a few restorations. After a good exploration, and many photos with friends (some of which I may email later if my friends send it to me in time - as I didn't take a camera) we decided to come down the toboggan. That's right - this time I didn't climb back down ( I'd already appreciated that difficulty before!!!) and so we all tobogganned down the wall! That was exhilarating - and would have been more so if I didn't have to slow down to avoid crashing into the people in front of me!!!

Other sites we saw in Beijing were The Temple of Heaven, The Temple of Confucius, and a Lama Temple - all of which were beautiful. (Technically that may not be correct for the Temple of Confucius, as it was almost in ruins - but the scaffolding was present - and rest assured, it will be beautiful by the olympics in 2008!!!) Tha Lama Temple also had the largest carving of Buddha from a single tree - 26 metres tall (though 8 of that is underground) - an official Guiness Book Record!!!

One warning about Beijing though is that everything seems to be under renovation for the Olympics. Whether it be Behai Park (a 1000 year old garden of the royal family), the Temple of Confucius, the Temple of Heaven or any of the various other monuments around - you are required to put up with views, footpaths and photo opportunities blocked off by scaffolding or men at work! They really do want the city to be perfect for the olympics!