Inside the great wall

Our hero . At the Hero's Stone

Our other hero, fearless guide Tower

On Saturday, our hosts for the day Tower (Wan Chong) and Stephen (Lian Guan-Hua) took us to the Great Wall where it crosses the mountains about 1.5 hour's drive north of central Beijing. This is probably the #1 tourist attraction in all of China, and it is easy to see why. The wall, built in the 1450s to protect against invasion from the North, stretches east to west for about 6,000 km (3,700 miles) across all kinds of terrain. The most famous sections of the wall are those that cross the mountains, rising and falling with the landscape no matter how steep it is. The wall is built of stone and brick, and averages about 10-20 feet tall and about as wide at the top, with a nearly continuous walkway all the way along its length. Many sections of the wall have deteriorated over the centuries, but large areas have been restored to attract tourists like myself.

The weather was spectacular on Saturday, clear, sunny and warm.

It really was this crowded, all the way up

In Chinese the wall is known as The Long Wall, or chang cheng, and is sometimes referred to as the wall of 10,000 Li ('li' being a unit of measure of about 500m).

Chairman Mao Zedong wrote a poem about Chang Cheng, which I won't even attempt to remember or translate, but the gist of it was that "You are not truly a man until you climb the Great Wall". So I suppose I can now say that I am a real man. Thank you Chairman Mao.

The easy way down -- don't tell Mao

After the Great Wall we visited the Ming Tombs, or in Chinese, Míng cháo shí sān líng - the thirteen tombs of the Ming Dynasty. These are the underground burial chambers of the emperors and their families who ruled China from the 14th to the 17th century. They are about 7-8 floors underground in enormous chambers, really underground palaces. It is difficult to imagine how much work it took to dig these monuments. Only three of the 13 tombs are open to the public. Chinese archaeologists are actively working on many others at the site.

One amusing note about the tombs is that the original builders apparently left several tablets of instructions to future explorers. In the 1950s when archaeologists began to excavate, they found little markers as they went, saying essentially "The tombs are this way", or "just another few feet below here, and to the north about 5 meters". It seems that the emperors planned ahead, and left a good instruction manual.

Although the tombs themselves were fascinating, the most memorable thing for me about the visit was the gardens surrounding the tombs. This was easily the most serene, peaceful, and beautiful place I have visited in China yet. Surrounded on all sides by hilly peach orchards for miles and miles, the gardens are full of little courtyards and quiet promenades where you can sit quietly for the afternoon and just relax and think about life.

I'll add more shortly, right now I have to get to work!