"He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man" - Mao (Bejing part 2)

Last Friday my friend Hiraa and I took the high speed rail up to Beijing. In December, on my first trip to Beijing,  I didn't get a chance to see several sights including the great wall.


I planned to go back at some point and see the wall. Since Danny had a conference there and already had an expenses paid trip it was a good time to join him.

We got to Beijing late Friday night and tried to find a restaurant that was still open for dinner. Our hotel wasn't in as nice of an area this time since it was picked to be near the conference by the Olympic village. The only place opened nearby was McDonald's and since there aren't many veggie options I gave up and skipped dinner. McDonald's in China doesn't seem to think it is worth selling salad. Their salad's are awful anyway so it isn't a huge loss.

In the morning, while our husbands were at the conference Hiraa and I explored the Temple of Heaven.



I didn't do a ton of research beforehand and it probably would have been useful if I had. I figured it was just another temple and briefly read that it was the temple where all the Ming emperors would go to pray. I think they also went there to meditate and make big decisions about the country. Hiraa said the Temple of Heaven was actually bigger than the Forbidden City which surprised me a bit. It actually was a giant park which contained several temples and halls. The round one with the pointed top is the famous part that you see in all the pictures of the area. Since the area was all built by the Ming dynasty it all had the same ornate style as the forbidden city and the summer palace.

There were so many details to look at as we walked around that had been painstakingly made by hand. I think living in the states and buying all kinds of consumer goods you start to feel like nothing is made by hand. When you actually see how people do things in China (the world's factory) you realize that most things actually are made by hand, if for no other reason - it is cheaper than using a machine.

While I was at Temple of Heaven I bought a cheap purse in the park. The woman selling it was crocheting it on the spot. Hiraa, who is much better at bargaining than I am negotiated it down from 65 RMB to 50 RMB or $8.00. She said the woman would have sold it for 35 or 40 (about $6.00)  if she kept going but I felt bad and just offered 50 RMB because I figured she could use the money more than I could. I really am bad at bargaining... oh well.










We wandered around the temples for a few hours until we both were really tired and hungry. Then we tried to find somewhere to eat. There really is nothing around the park. There is one fancy Chinese restaurant in the park that does banquet meals but it was closed when we got there. We ended up looking up a chain restaurant I like in Shanghai called Blue Frog on Hiraa's ipad and we took a cab there. I figured wherever it was located there would be plenty of western restaurants. I have gotten really bad about making an effort to try the local foods...


The restaurant was in an area called San Li Tun which was pretty modern and full of stores and western restaurants. It pretty much felt like any big generic shopping mall. We didn't end up finding Blue Frog. Instead we had a snack at a crepe place. Then we walked into a few shops while we waited for the conference to end so everyone could meet us for dinner.



Danny, Aquib and Joe all went to Beijing for the conference. We also got to meet Joe's girlfriend Wen Wen who is a grad student in Beijing at Peking University. After searching for an Indian restaurant for a long time, we eventually gave up and got dinner in a middle eastern restaurant called 1001 Nights. It had really fun decor and they even had a Belly Dancer. The food was pretty good, I had stuffed grape leaves and hummus and a salad.















After dinner we decided to check out the night market at Wang Fu Jing. They mostly have a bunch of food booths along the street. I got candy covered fruit called bing tang hu lu. I skipped the fried scorpions, snakes and seahorses. It started raining so we didn't stay at the market for long. Danny said the main part was a bit farther from the subway but we all got soaked so we decided not to venture into the main area in the rain.



































The next day we planned to finally check out the great wall. We had a surprise, a rare March snowstorm. It was Hiraa's first time seeing snow ever, which led to me and Danny encouraging her to make snowballs and other silly activities.

We decided to go to an area of the wall called Ju yong guan. The most common areas of the wall tourists visit are Ba da ling and Mu tian yu but from what I heard they are insanely crowded. I had to be back to the city by 5:40 to catch the last high speed rail train for Shanghai so we decided to get a taxi rather than a bus tour. Since there were four of us it was only slightly more than the tourist bus.

Danny negotiated with the first taxi we flagged down outside our hotel and he took the four of us to the wall and the Ming tombs and back to our hotel for 600 RMB (just under $100). If we were better at bargaining we could have probably done it for 500 RMB. I think the tourist buses that take you there cost about 100 RMB a person so it was only about $30 more than if we had all taken the bus and we got to set our own schedule.

Ju yong guan is about 40 minutes to an hour outside Beijing, depending on traffic. I was pretty excited when we got to the wall. It really is quite a beautiful sight, especially in the snow. Mao said "He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man." From what I read previous to Mao's statement, it wasn't looked on all that fondly. Mostly it sounds like it was a bit of a disaster building, maintaining and guarding the incredibly long wall. Lots of people died in the process. The wall's success in actually protecting China's border from the Mongolians was pretty minimal. I can't imagine many countries have the resources to build something on this scale though, the fact that it is there is pretty amazing. It is one of the most impressive man made constructions on earth... you can't see it from space though.































































 We hiked the wall for about two hours. The walk up wasn't too bad but it was slightly slippery with the snow. I was really nervous it was going to get icy by the time we headed down. It ended up being alright but a bit slippery. Most people, including us went single file and held on tight to the rail. My feet slipped once or twice. I saw a few Chinese women walking in heels though and if they managed it couldn't be that bad. They had a bunch of heart shaped locks  that people attached to a chain when they get engaged at the wall.















The wall was pretty amazing. In the summer, when Danny has another conference in Beijing, I'd really like to do one of those wild wall hikes where you camp out overnight.

After we left the wall we stopped at one of the Ming tombs. The tombs of 13 out of the 17 Ming emperors are in the area outside of Beijing. Only three of them are open to the public though. We went to one called Ding ling. I have to say, I wasn't terribly impressed with the Ming tombs. We also already saw a Ming tomb in Nanjing and Ding ling wasn't all that different. There was a gate and an underground palace that we walked into that looked like it used to store treasures. There were no longer treasures but there was a museum area with a crown and some other royal items.