Beijing June 17, 2016

Beijing June 17, 2016

Today was the day. We were off to see the Great Wall of China. Luckily for us the weather was cooperating. It was overcast, but still warm. Not the blazing sun of the day before. It's about a two hour drive, and that includes some brutal traffic. Beijing is a city of 20.6 million people. They have so many cars on the road now that they actually have to have a lottery to get a license plate. Also, once a week, cars with a license plate that end in a certain number cannot drive in the city. Those people have to take public transportation. Another thing I learned was that Beijing is not just the city but basically a province. The Great Wall is still in Beijing, but definitely out in the country.

On our way to the Great Wall we stopped by a Jade factory. It was beautiful and Jade is supposed to give you good luck. Mark will be happy to know that I did not make any purchases. Nice Jade is very expensive.

Finally the Great Wall. There are three ways up and down the wall, walking up, taking a cable car up and down and finally taking a chair lift up and taking a toboggan down. Of course I chose #3. Who wouldn't want to say they rode a toboggan down the Great Wall of China. The portion of the Great Wall we visited was at Mutianyu. It is a reconstructed portion. Even the reconstructed portion is tough because it goes through some mountain passes. There are guard watch towers at pretty regular intervals. It's very steep stairs that you have to hold onto hand rails in order to not tumble down the stairs.

What we really wanted to do was to walk on the unreconstructed portion of the wall but when we got to the end of the reconstructed portion there was no way to access it except through a window. So what did we do, crawl out the window. We later learned that there was a path we could have taken, but crawling out a window is so much more exciting. The unreconstructed portion was quite overgrown with vegetation and portions of it had fallen away. We make it to the 1st watch town and found some people drinking champagne. They were kind enough to let us pose with their beverages for photos. We kept going and we're trying to make it to another watch tower but ran out of time. It's amazing when you are on the wall. The view is amazing because the wall is built along a ridge. You can see for miles and luckily the weather was cooperating and we could see for quite a long way. What a feat of engineering. We happen to run into some people from Spokane. I only knew that they were from Washington because the boy had a Sounders jersey on. It is a small world.

It was time to turn back and take the toboggan down. That was super fun. One of my travel companions did a video of the journey down. I'm not sure this would have been legal in the US. There were staff monitoring us as we went down, but some of them were asleep, so I'm not sure how effective the monitoring was.

A few props courtesy of some other hikers.

Kristin heading down on the tobbogan

Time to head back to the city. We went to an amazing modern art district in Beijing called 798. It's an old factory area that has been turned over to local artists and galleries. There is some really cool street art. I took lots of pictures of course. We always hear about the antiquities of China but it has a vibrant arts scene.

Finally, off to our Peking duck dinner. Delicious.

When we got back, one of our guides Jeff, offered to take whoever wanted to go to a very working class area of Beijing to drink some beer and do some people watching. We took the subway there. I felt like a sardine jammed in the subway car. People were coming home from work and heading out for Friday night fun. The neighborhood we were in was very lively. Everyone was on the street. Eating, drinking, cooking. They ride a lot of scooters here and no one wears helmets. We saw a family with the mom, dad, and two small kids on one scooter last night. We left about 10:30pm and hailed a cab back. The first cab driver couldn't find our hotel though. He let us out and we hailed another cab. This one got us back to the hotel. What an adventure.

More tomorrow.