Today was a full day of activities — from visiting the Sacred Way road to the Ming Dynasty tombs, to the Great Wall, to one of Beijing’s night markets — it was a full day. Lots to cover here.
Sacred Way: First, Sacred Way, about an hour outside Beijing, and home to the tombs of Ming Dynasty’s 13 emperors (and their concubines). The grounds were beautiful, both naturally and with carved statues of various military & civilian figures, and animals (from the real world and imagined). The statues and buildings pictured below were constructed in early 1400’s:
The Great Wall: After a stop at a jade factory and for lunch, we ascended the Great Wall — a truly awe-inspiring structure. Originally built roughly 2,500 years ago by 1 million conscripts and 300,000 soldiers. The many who died during construction were simply buried within the Wall. The restored section we visited (Mutianyu section) was last restored some 600 years ago during the Ming dynasty, and then most recently again in 1986. Here are just a handful of the numerous photos we took:
At this section of the Great Wall, people ascend by a ski-lift … and there were two ways to descend: ski lift (again) or the method we chose: Toboggan. (I’ll post video later)
On the way back to the hotel the tour guide took us by a tea hall for a “tea ceremony ” and the “opportunity” to buy tea — it is an annoying feature of these tours that you are taken to places for a hard sell of some product, but it’s harmless enough if you resist.
During our drive to/from Sacred Way and Great Wall, I was struck by the seemingly “planned sprawl” everywhere: with 22 million people and 6 million cars, Beijing faces serious challenges housing/handling infrastructure for the burgeoning middle class and explosive growth.
In addition to the great subway system, there are seemingly innumerable 10+lane highways throughout, and ringing, the city/surrounding areas, and traffic is very much a “make your own lane”-experience, which seems crazy/unsafe to me, but I didn’t see any accidents.
Also, with 22 MM people — and growing — it is clear that housing is a challenge. As we drove around, I was struck by the number of massive apartment communities, which are stacked like collections of dominoes, each “node” or collection of buildings must house several thousand people. Below are just a handful of the mini-City apartment nodes/complexes throughout the city.
Finally, we ended our evening with some Peking duck (had to have that while here), and a walk through one of the many night markets in Beijing (this one was along Wangfujing street).
Tomorrow we leave for Hong Kong via a 24-hour sleeper train… we will travel roughly 1000 miles by train.
More later!
