After leaving Chengdu, we had 3 days to explore a city that has been the capital of China for over 850 years. It may not have been enough time to visit everything Beijing has to offer, but we certainly saw some of the main historic sights and were able to experience the craziness of the Silk Market. Our first full day in the city, we woke up early and went to visit the site most frequently associated with China, the Great Wall! There are three open sections (Badaling, Mutianyu and Jinshanling) of the wall for tourists that are easily accessible from Beijing; we chose to visit Mutianyu, which is located about an hour and a half outside of the city, has been restored fairly recently, and is known for having smaller crowds due to the challenge of the ascending and descending stairs.
The Great Wall runs over 5,500 miles and has taken shape over a 2,000 year period. When we were in Xian we saw the ancient city wall, which (when it was built) surrounded the city in order to protect it from intruders. In the Qin Dynasty (221BC), when Qin Shi Huang unified China into a centralized feudal state, he decided a similar, but massive defense barricade was needed to protect the people from their northern neighbors. Then, when the Chinese were battling the Huns (go Mulan!) from 200BC-24AD, the wall was extended all the way into western China. It wasn’t until the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) that the wall was revitalized in order to keep the Mongols in the north from raiding and terrorizing Beijing; these sections are the locations that are synonymous with the images most commonly seen of the wall.
The stretch of wall accessible from Mutianyu is only 2.5 km long, but with so many steps it feels a whole lot longer! We spent about 4 hours on the wall exploring the many watchtowers and sections between them, while stopping for breaks almost every time we found a breeze. Even though it was a pretty hazy day on top of the wall, we still had some beautiful views of the mountain range and the seemingly never-ending (mostly) granite structure. There were many people atop the wall who come from various nationalities and arrived in groups both big and small to see this picturesque landscape. Instead of hiking down the mountainside to get back to the car park at the end of our trek, we took a speedy, winding, awesome toboggan ride, where we giggled the whole way down, except when Taylor hit Ann (oops!). After a moment of shock and apologies we were back to giggling and enjoying the breezy ride.
We enjoyed a delicious Thai meal that night in Beijing and as we were leaving the restaurant to walk back to our hotel, the skies opened up and began pouring so badly that we hesitantly resorted to taking a rickety pedicab back to our hotel. What an experience that was with the rain pouring down, a large piece of plastic covering us up and a crazy driver trying to avoid a significant amount of oncoming traffic. Needless to say we were happy when we arrived back at the hotel safely.
The next day we spent visiting some of the main sights around Beijing: the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, before heading to the Silk Market for some quintessential counterfeit goods shopping and then onto the site of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In the center of Beijing lies the Forbidden City, the world’s largest palace complex and the imperial palace for twenty-four emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The palace covers 74 hectares, includes 8700 rooms and is surrounded by a 52-meter wide moat and a 10-meter tall wall. It’s no surprise that this massive, colorful complex is one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions, and the time we spent meandering around the grounds left us with an overall feeling of awe, sore feet, and an appreciation for the small-by-comparison residences back home.
After our walk through the Forbidden City, we crossed to Tiananmen Square, which was initially built in 1417 with the primary purpose of declaring the emperor/empress to the common people. Today, most of the world knows it for the student-led protests of 1989, which resulted in the June 4 Massacre and the famous ‘Tank Man’. The modern day Tiananmen Square and Monument to the People's Heros lies at the center of four important buildings: the Forbidden City; the Great Hall of the People where the China National People’s Congress meets; the Memorial Hall of Chairman Mao, where Mao’s body lies in a crystal coffin surrounded by bouquets of flowers; and the National Museum of China, which illustrates Chinese culture and history from 1.7 million years ago until 1921, when the last emperor left the throne.
After all that history, we took a walk through the hustle and bustle of the Silk Market, where you can’t even look towards a shop without being accosted by the workers saying: “Lady, lady! You want see bag? Come inside – more colors.” We were not there too long, just long enough to walk through the several floors to see their wares and negotiate a few purchases. After leaving the busy market we headed to the other side of Beijing to see the Olympic Park and the buildings referred to as the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest. These buildings housed some of the 2008 Olympic Games and are open to tourists to visit and experience.
Although it was short two and a half day visit to Beijing, we were able to capture the significant historic highlights and we felt it was a nice conclusion to our China experience. The next day we boarded our 10th flight leg as we left Asia for a 46-hour layover in the beautiful city of Paris before proceeding onto Rabat, Morocco for our next assignment!