4th March 2011 – Beijing

4th March 2011 – Beijing

It was a very early start – 7.15am. It took an hour to pick up from 4 hotels in the area and you will understand why I am telling you this later in the blog.

Our first call was to be the Ming Tombs a 40 square kilometre area containing the Tombs of 13 Emperors. Once we left urban Beijing the countryside appeared flat and arid, they have a real water problem here. We were disappointed that we couldn't walk down the avenue which is lined with stone statues of animals, etc as it was closed; however what we did see was extremely interesting if difficult to describe. We descended 88 feet below ground to see the burial vaults of Emperor Wanli who ruled from 1573 to 1620. We saw his white marble throne, golden crown and red coffin along with those of his wife and first concubine. Alongside the coffins, which are actually replicas and, therefore, empty there were a large number of red boxes which had held gold, etc to enable the Emperor to live a wealthy life in heaven. The white marble of the walls is original and in remarkably good condition.

From here we were taken to the Jade Market, ostensibly to be shown the different jades, but in reality in the hope we would buy something, which we did! Jade comes in other colours than green, ie white and a rose colour and some of the items for sale were absolutely fabulous with prices to match. We then went for lunch, soggy Pak Choi again.

Then onto the highlight of the day, The Great Wall of China. Contrary to what we'd understood, you cannot see the Wall from outer space. Construction of the Wall began as far back as the 5th Century B.C. and winds across northern China for over 6,200 miles. However, the Wall that most visitors see consists of a few restored segments near Beijing that were built, extended or refortified during the Ming Dynasty (A.D.1368-1644). Hundreds of thousands of labourers were used to build the Wall and many are buried in the Wall, making it probably the largest cemetery on Earth. We thought we would be taken to the most popular tourist site which is at Badaling but instead we were taken slightly further out to Mutianyu, which is less crowded. A 20 minutes hike from the car park up to the Wall led us to decide to take the cable car (a brave decision by Stephan as he hates cable cars). The first surprise was how steep it was just to walk to the cable car and for a fleeting moment we wondered if we would even manage to reach the Wall. Around this area is a market with shopkeepers almost aggressively attempting to sell their wares. There was also a ......
Subway (I know what you thought I was going to write). Eventually we boarded the cable car and less than 5 minutes later we were at the base of the Wall. The views were tremendous but we still hadn't quite reached the actual top of the Wall. 10 steps led to the ramparts and weren't too bad to scale although at one point I (Rosalyn) almost felt I had to crawl the last 2 steps and then we were actually on the Wall. Unbelievable. We could have walked a mile from one watchtower to another but after negotiating our way to one tower we decided we had 'done the deed' and made our way back down. The view from the ramparts was amazing as the whole area is surrounded by green forests and deep, wooded ravines. A real 'once in a lifetime' moment.

From here we were taken to a Silk Market, which for us was a waste of time as we had been to one in Shanghai and then we set off back to the hotel. Now, if you remember I said the 4 hotels pick-ups had taken us just an hour in the morning; well we arrived in Beijing to be greeted by Friday evening rush-hour and that one hour took us THREE! It's impossible to describe the traffic here, but think Manchester/London (definitely not Hull) at rush-hour and then 4 x the traffic and you would still not be close. It's difficult to comprehend and can only be appreciated if you can actually see it. With no lane discipline and cars and bikes and even pedestrians coming at you from all angles you can begin to understand how such traffic jams occur. Quite how they can deal with this problem I really don't know. They already operate a system whereby during the working week cars with certain number plates cannot be used on such and such a day, but as we see it this is making little or no impact on the number of cars on the road.

After a rest we went for a coffee. While we were standing in the queue a young American who was nearby said to us that we were the 6th or 7th Westerners he'd seen during the day and because we tend to stand out he was curious where we had come from. After explaining that nearly 3000 people had disembarked a ship on Thursday we bought our coffee and sat down at a table. A couple of minutes he reappeared with his wife, sat down next to us and started to ask where we had been, etc. He and his wife, both in their late 20s/early 30s, are on a round the world trip and we got the impression that they were desperate for a conversation with someone who spoke English!

We returned to the hotel and although it was only 10 o'clock we went to bed as we had an early start the next day.

We've hardly given justice to this fantastic day and it's impossible to detail everything. We can only hope that we are giving you a flavour of China.

We hope publish some pictures of the Wall and other things when we return home in a few days.