The Great Wall

What is a visit to China without seeing the Great Wall. I know I am a little late on this as our visit was last Saturday, Aug. 23, but better late than never. It is about an hour's drive from Beijing. On our way there we visited a jade factory. There are many good sources of jade in the Beijing area. They had all sorts of objects from jewelry to statues. One interesting piece is a multilayered ball that they make from a single piece. It is called a family ball where each layer represents a different generation. We bought a small jade dog as Trent's Chinese zodiac is the dog. From the jade factory we headed the rest of the way to the Great Wall.

Here we are on the Great Wall of China. As you can see, this section is in a vary hilly region.

The steps up the Wall can be quite steep and the spacing between steps is uneven. We made it up to the first guard tower on the hill. Parts of the Wall were started over 2,000 years ago, although I don't think out section is quite that old. Still, it is amazing to be walking on a structure that was built before the discover of America by the Europeans.

After climbing around on the Wall for a couple hours we stopped at a Friendship store for lunch. These are special stores for foreign tourist and have an interesting selection of handmade Chinese wares. From there we went to the Emperor's Summer Palace. It has actually been in use for much longer than the Forbidden City. They have a quite large man-made lake, impressive as it was all dug by hand.

On the way back to the hotel we passed by the Bird's Nest, the Olympic stadium for Beijing. It was the day before the closing ceremonies. You can see the Olympic torch still burning in the middle of the stadium.