The Wall

In China, there is a saying that you haven't seen China until you have seen the Great Wall of China. And today, I have seen China (and the Great Wall). Let me tease you with this one picture before I tell my tale ;)
The day started with another visit to a silk factory. Apparently that helps defray the gas costs of the journey.
We then drove by the business district where we saw the tallest building in Beijing
And these cute towers
As well as the new CCTV building with a very daring architecture, right beside the old one that burned down during a fireworks celebration
We then drove to a restaurant beside a ming vase factory (sorry, forgot to take pictures) and then reached our destination: Mutianyu
That's me at the base of the mountain
Can I spread the moment a bit further before showing you the actual wall? We took a cable car on the way up. Travel in style or don't travel at all!
And then we were on the wall!
Wow. What a feeling. What a beautiful sight. What clean air! I don't know if it's my oxygen starved brain after too many days in dusty Beijing but I felt terrific. I was running up and down the stairs like a maniac, breathing relief and taking in the sights. WOW! Words cannot describe it.

There are watchouses every 100m or so where groups of soldiers would stand guard and warn other outpost with smoke signals if enemies were approaching

These watchouses are pretty small, here's a view from the inside
And here's another view
And me standing around looking happy
The wall itself is beautiful. The area we visited is fairly recent by wall standard, having being erected only 500 or so year ago and renovated about 20-30 years ago if I understood the guide correctly.
Here's an attempt at an artistic shot
We climbed pretty high up, probably because I am the EndorphinBuzzer and will not turn down a reasonable challenge. The guide never went that high up before and Alex didn't really have a choice to follow if he didn't want to look like a coward. I'm really happy we chose to get our own private guide for the day, we may not have had the opportunity to spend so much time there otherwise.
I will never forget how beautiful the wall is, snaking across the wilderness. How could they build such a long and beautiful thing before the invention of machines?
You can see here in the distance that the wall splits or forks into two children. The guide said that Mutianyu is particular for that.
Look at all those steps. All those bricks had to be carried by workers and their mules. Wow.
And the wall just doesn't stop. I think I heard that it is over 5000 km long. Do I sound amazed already? I am!
As if the wall itself wasn't enough to amaze me, there was wonderful sights everywhere I looked! Look at this lonely tree on the mountain top!
Then I looked at the wall again, snaking away from me, wanting me to climb it some more!
I took some breaks while I waited for the rest of the party to catch up to me ;)
And once I reached the highest point accessible to the public, I was rewarded with beautiful views. I still can't believe they built this gigantic structure so remote in the mountains so long ago. I am losing my vocabulary. Sorry.
Unfortunately for me (fortunately for the rest of my party) this was the highest point accessible.
So it made a good picture opportunity for the rest of the wall being restored (too wild to walk on the guide told us)
Here is a really bad picture of me, but I like it because you can see the wall snaking away in the background!
It was snowing on our way down. Cute.
Another shot of the wall snaking away before we part?
On the way home, we visited a tea house. We tasted some yummy tea but unfortunately the price were crazy ever for tourist standards so I didn't get any. Hopefully I can find the same leaves on the street for more reasonable prices.
The saying is true. You haven't seen China until you have seen the great walls. Of all the sites around Beijing, I think Mutianyu was the best for us. The EndorphinBuzzer on his own would have chosen a more adventurous path like Simatai to JingShanLing but with Alex in tow, the cable car accessibility and the low number of tourists of Mutianyu turned out to be just perfect!

I am now fully re-oxygenized with clean mountain air and ready for another 2.5 days of exploring Beijing before coming home where I will face the difficult task of returning to a routine life after 5 weeks on holidays. How will I ever be able to go back to cooking for myself, getting up in the morning and working to earn my keep?

Forbidden City and Downtime

The Forbidden City (or Palace Museum as it is now called) is a nice 15 minute walk away from our hotel, so it made sense for that to be our first visit in Beijing. It's quite something to see it on TV, but the palace really has to be visited in person to grasp the size of it all.
The whole forbidden city is surrounded by this huge wall (3.4km in length)
And a moat to keep intruders away
Inside the palace is a variety of buildings and beautiful decorative features
Some buildings and open spaces were used for state affairs
While others were used for the more personnal needs of the emperor
The palace also features a clock museum
And the retirement quarters have been turned into a gallery of precious artifacts such as these valuable seals
Everywhere I looked was beautiful decorations like this colored porcelain wall
There's also some beautiful gardens
And fantastic looking buildings to relax in
There's big walls dividing the various sections of the palace. We were explained by a friendly volunteer that access was restricted to most of the palace to women and eunuch (castrated males) to prevent questions about paternity of the empress and concubine's offspring. Eunuchs held prestigious positions in government and were greatly rewarded with prestige and treasure but at what cost!!!

The forbidden city is an amazing way to spend a day. I'm glad we went during a weekday, I can't imagine how busy it gets on the weekends!
After the visit to the Forbidden City, I wasn't feeling so well, coming down with a mild fever, headache and cough. It must be something I caught on the plane or just general tiredness. I went back to the hotel for a nap while Alex explored the shopping district at Wangfujing. He forgot the camera so no pictures but we'll be back for sure, it sounds like a wonderful place to spend an evening. I'm much better this morning. We hope to make it to Tian'anmen square today and then the zoo to see the pandas!

Towers of Xi'an

Xi'an has towers that provide landmarks in the middle of its walls. You've seen the Bell Tower before from my first entry about Xi'an
And there's also its sister tower, the Drum Tower.
Today we decided to visit both towers.

The Drum Tower is full of drums! For a small donation you can even bang the giant drum.
The roof features a bunch of cool details
And the top balcony offers great views of the city below
Inside the tower is an exhibit on, what else, drums!
I really wanted to bang on that one
The next stop was the Bell tower which has, you guessed it, a big bell!
You could bang the bell for a small donation, we didn't. Inside the tower was an exhibit on pottery and one on furniture (no pictures allowed for the furniture!)
Apparently, the Chinese invented the chairs. There were early model chairs on display. Mildly interesting would be an overstatement.

The views and architecture of the building itself were the real attraction...
The next stop on our daily visit to the city core's sights was the small goose pagoda where we climbed 14 (or was it 15?) of these narrowing and uneven staircases
to make it to the broken top floor
where we got some pretty amazing views

We wandered the rest of the grounds
Where I was able to bang this drum for a donation half of what was required at the bell tower, what a deal!
The bell is rumored to resound for 5km!

Admission to the grounds also includes the Xi'an museum
We visited a few exhibits about pottery
Buddhas
Calligraphy
and Chinese paintings
The highlight of the museum is surely the grounds where beautiful picture opportunities abound
Next, we made our way to Tang Dynasty Xi'an which is a fancy restaurant that offers a show after dinner (we didn't go to the show!) The restaurant looks really good and lots of attention on the details from the table centerpriece
to the fake gold walls
and matching plates and bowls
I'm not sure what parts of the chicken was floating in my chicken coconut soup but it tasted all right
The tofu and seafood in a soupy sauce were really really delicious
So was this bbq pork in honey
These noodles with beef were also pretty good
And this chicken drumstick stuffed with shrimps were awesome!
And lots of fruits for dessert, yummy!
After dinner, we made our way to the big goose pagoda
Where we watched was is reputedly the largest musical fountain in Asia (how many are there?)
The show was pretty cool but a bit underwhelming. It sounds cooler on paper I guess. We wandered around and found some pretty creepy sculptures depicting scenes of the every day life of regular Chinese
The whole area felt pretty festive with carnival like games for the foolish (or confident)
It's a beautiful area to spend a lazy evening
Tomorrow is a travel day to Beijing. I can't wait to see the capital!!!