The Wall – Part I

8/10/15

The results are in: our Beijing hotel gets the award for best buffet breakfast – and this coming from a non-breakfast eater – and the award for most hysterically confusing cultural exchange. Since I don’t read Chinese and would have very little luck trying to identify which building was the post office, I enlisted the concierge in helping me mail my postcards. He was at first very surprised that someone was actually using postcards and wasn’t sure what to do with them (this is a letter?), and then had a very hard time trying to understand what Costa Rica and Brazil were. (Yes, I said what, not where…) In trying to explain that they were Central & South American countries, I think I confused him even more and we departed with his warning that he wasn’t quite sure the post office would know where to send them. But I have a feeling the post office will most assuredly know what to do with them. (Fingers crossed!) [NN: Someone has to be a Brazil futbol fan, and most know, right?]

Jade workshop

Our first stop of the day was to yet another craftsman warehouse: this time a jade shop. The intricate carvings out of these massive, glistening blocks of semi-precious stone were undoubtedly impressive, but how many 5 foot diameter sculptures of stampeding horses do they sell for $10,000?! We did get a lesson on how to tell real jade from lower quality jade (a lesson which, 8 months later, completely escapes me) and watch demonstrations of carvers detailing small statuettes of crouching lions. Beautiful stuff but crazy expensive.

Detailed jade carving

Their largest, most expensive piece

Once the obligatory souvenir stop out of the way, we filed back onto the bus and headed to the highlight of our trip to Beijing: the Great Wall (dun dun duuuuun!). The closest portion of the wall open to tourists was about 45 miles outside of Beijing, through beautiful rolling green hills, where you could see crumbling but preserved outposts that used to link to the larger portions of the wall together. During the wall’s heyday, soldiers spent 2 months at a time as sentries along the wall, signaling to each other from each tower with smoke during the day and with fireworks at night (gotta thank the Chinese for that invention!). The wall itself was originally built to keep out raiders from the northern nomadic territories (by modern-day political boundaries, however, the wall is well within the northern border of China; so sadly, we could not literally see into Mongolia) and, contrary to popular belief, the wall cannot actually be seen from space. It was never a contiguous single wall, but rather a series of sections built by different emperors between the 5^th Century BCE and the 17^th Century CE and stretching an estimated 13,000 miles east to west across China (to give you some perspective, the entire U.S. is less than 3,000 miles east to west). The portion of the wall we were able to access, the Badaling Wall, was a relatively small section of wall with a military outpost dating back to the Ming Dynasty in the 15^th century. This was the first section ever open to tourists in 1957…just think – we walked the same path as Nixon! ;) [NN: There have actually been multiple Great Walls. Originally the Chinese built the wall closer to Beijing on flat land, but this was ineffective as the Mongols easily climbed the wall (Lesson to Donald Trump here.). Now, the wall is built along a VERY steep ridgeline which is much more effective and actually where the land basically becomes a cliff they make an outpost and the wall has gaps.]

Driving out to the Wall - you can't miss it.

Obligatory group photo - with peace sign pose - in front of the Wall