The Great Wall

   

The Great Wall was incredible. A brief history lesson.  The Great Wall is 3900 miles long, that is just the man made wall portion.  If you include other barriers like rivers and trenches, the length from end to end increases to 5500 miles.  For a little perspective, the United States is about 3000 miles wide from east to west.  The Wall took about 2000 years to build, from around 400 BC to about 1600 AD.  Here's a politically charged question for ya.  If the Chinese were able to build a stone wall that is between 15 and 30 ft in height and 15-25 ft in width back in the days when donkeys were hauling, why can't the United States build a border fence?  Just curious.

We could have spent the whole day here but our senior citizen group couldn't stay out in the sun for that long, so we only got a few hours.  When we got to the wall our tour guide told us we needed to buy a tram ticket to get up to the wall.  This happened a lot on the tour.  We would get somewhere and the initial entry fee would be included, but if we wanted to get into the actual temple or palace we had to pay an additional fee.  So frustrating, especially for a cheapskate like me.  This time, I'm afraid I threw a little fit, no thrashing on the ground but a little foot stomping.  In the end the guide pointed in a vague direction, said we had two hours and was gone.

We wandered around until we found an entrance.  During our wanderings we came across a man with a camel.  He had a sign posted next to his camel that said 2 RMB.  Great a picture on a camel for 50 cents.  We put the kids up there, took some pictures and handed the guy a 5 RMB note.  He hands it back and says, 'No, 100 RMB.'  Rich and I point at the sign and say it says 2 and he says that is for a picture next to the sign, the camel is 50.  We throw the 5 kuai at him and go to walk off, suddenly we are surrounded by four camel thugs pulling at our camera and yelling at us in Chinese.  In the end, camelboy said we owed the money because we didn't ask if it was a different price.  Rich retorted with, you owe me 100 kuai because you touched my girl (to put her up on the camel) without asking.  In the end we gave him 10 RMB and called it good.  It was a little scary though, check out the picture, the guy was huge.

After our adventure with the camel, it was on to the wall.

The wall was crazy steep.  Even with the handrail it was hard to get down.  Getting up wasn't too bad.

If I had to guess from this picture how old Rich is, I would say twelve, fourteen max.

Over all, the Great Wall is the coolest thing we have done in China.

Beijing

Cross it off the bucket list, I've seen Mao's body.  As many of you know, I'm a Communist at heart so this was a lifelong dream come true.  For those of you that don't know me well, I'm kidding, my true mantra would be closer to 'Pass the tea'; 'Beck for President'; 'Welcome to Obamanation and extreme taxation' or any other catchy, right-wing, gun-lovin', conservative message. 

Mao has been dead for 33 years and his body is encased in a glass casket in Tienanmen Square.  After standing in line for over two hours we were frisked and quickly shuffled passed a large mound of orange wax in a green uniform.  Mao's bones may have been buried somewhere under the fabric and paint but to me it looked like a bad Madame Tussand's replica.  Rich shed a few tears.

From Tienanmen we crossed the street to the Forbidden City.  That was very cool.  We went to Beijing with a tour group so we didn't get to decide how long we stayed a the various sites.  Rich is the perfect candidate for a tour; he follows directions, stays with the group and doesn't mind following a yellow flag around all day.  I, however, did not love the tour setting, especially the geriatric, Chinese tour setting.  Matt and Lily were the only kids and I was the only foreigner; we got lots of attention from all of the little old ladies in our group.  We were also disciplined for unruly behavior such as jumping, running and climbing; all of which are considered extremely dangerous.

Here is a prime example of completely out of control behavior.  Children scaling walls to the height of their extremely tall (5'6") mother. It is a miracle they survived.

Here's Lily at the Temple of the Sun.  She was finally coaxed down from this unstable, solid granite wall by a group of concerned citizens.  Where is that girl's mother?

This is our oppressive tour guide.  He really was nice, we were just on a tight schedule so that flag was always up and moving.  No time for lallygagging or second looks.  Hurry, hurry lots to see! 

I am so easily entertained.  Matt going cross-eyed is hilarious to me.

These two people are not actors or dressed up to give the city a more authentic feel.  These are their everyday, casual , going to market clothes.  Love it!

Nothing special about this picture, I just love this womans classic Chinese style, the more patterns, the better.