After a meeting in the morning, four of us hired a car and driver and made the 1.5 hour journey to the Great Wall. You can’t just rent a car here in China and drive yourself around. Only Chinese citizens are allowed to hold a driver’s license and drive. It’s probably just as well because a few of the Chinese folks who were schooled in the West we have been doing business with say they won’t even drive here!
Just like the drive to Zu Cheng, the journey up to Mutianyu was quite the experience in terms of both the scenery and the ride itself! We went to a well preserved section of the wall north-east of Beijing. This section of the wall was built during the Ming Dynasty in 1404 BC! It’s hard to describe how massive this thing is! It sits high up on a mountain ridge and runs along the ridge for as far as the eye can see. Thankfully, the pollution has been less the last few days and was even less as we moved away from the city.
We took a chairlift a short distance up the mountain to the Wall and climbed around a bit. It’s much more a series of varying inclines of stairs than it is a level foot path (think the “incline” in Colorado Springs). You can see how far back the Wall goes behind Paul in the picture. Instead of the chairlift, we took a toboggan ride down. It was really quite fun! It was a little sled you sit on and ride back down to the base of the mountain along a metal track a lot lock a bobsled run. There was a handle with a brake so you could control your speed on the way down. I was really moving for a good bit of it until I caught up with some guy ahead of me and had to slow down. One of the guys running the thing was yelling at me in Chinese at one point as I came flying around a corner. After talking with my friends at the bottom, I realized the guy wasn’t yelling for me to slow down, he was yelling for the guy ahead of me to “go faster”!!!
Once at the bottom, we walked around the various vendor stalls set up along the path to the chairlift. Unlike my experience in the silk market last time I was here, no one grabbed me and tried to pull me towards their goods. There was just a lot of “hey Lady” and “you want to buy?” as they held out some item. Of course I was drawn to the food stand that had a wide variety of nuts and dried fruits. I sampled so many pieces, I was full by the time I actually bought some molasses and sesame seed covered walnuts!
I can only attach five pictures to a post, so I’ll tell you about the evening in another post!
%20Great%20Wall%20with%20dragons%20on%20roof.jpg)
After a meeting in the morning, four of us hired a car and driver and made the 1.5 hour journey to the Great Wall. You can’t just rent a car here in China and drive yourself around. Only Chinese citizens are allowed to hold a driver’s license and drive. It’s probably just as well because a few of the Chinese folks who were schooled in the West we have been doing business with say they won’t even drive here!%20Gondola%20up%20to%20Great%20Wall.jpg)
Just like the drive to Zu Cheng, the journey up to Mutianyu was quite the experience in terms of both the scenery and the ride itself! We went to a well preserved section of the wall north-east of Beijing. This section of the wall was built during the Ming Dynasty in 1404 BC! It’s hard to describe how massive this thing is! It sits high up on a mountain ridge and runs along the ridge for as far as the eye can see. Thankfully, the pollution has been less the last few days and was even less as we moved away from the city.%20Paul%20on%20Great%20Wall.jpg)
We took a chairlift a short distance up the mountain to the Wall and climbed around a bit. It’s much more a series of varying inclines of stairs than it is a level foot path (think the “incline” in Colorado Springs). You can see how far back the Wall goes behind Paul in the picture. Instead of the chairlift, we took a toboggan ride down. It was really quite fun! It was a little sled you sit on and ride back down to the base of the mountain along a metal track a lot lock a bobsled run. There was a handle with a brake so you could control your speed on the way down. I was really moving for a good bit of it until I caught up with some guy ahead of me and had to slow down. One of the guys running the thing was yelling at me in Chinese at one point as I came flying around a corner. After talking with my friends at the bottom, I realized the guy wasn’t yelling for me to slow down, he was yelling for the guy ahead of me to “go faster”!!!%20Great%20Wall%20vendors.1.jpg)
Once at the bottom, we walked around the various vendor stalls set up along the path to the chairlift. Unlike my experience in the silk market last time I was here, no one grabbed me and tried to pull me towards their goods. There was just a lot of “hey Lady” and “you want to buy?” as they held out some item. Of course I was drawn to the food stand that had a wide variety of nuts and dried fruits. I sampled so many pieces, I was full by the time I actually bought some molasses and sesame seed covered walnuts!%20Terri%20&%20Paul%20trying%20dried%20fruits.jpg)
I can only attach five pictures to a post, so I’ll tell you about the evening in another post!
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