I had a business meeting in Beijing this week and was given permission from home to stay over on Saturday to visit the Great Wall. Bright and early on Saturday morning (after a very late night out with a Beijing colleague), I met my new boss and his wife for a guided tour of the Wall.
Dan and Margarite arranged a driver and a tour guide through the hotel. The Badaling section of the wall is close to Beijing - only an hour drive from downtown. Our tour guide was a very enthusiastic narrator and so good at his job, that he was asked to give a tour to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, during the general's visit to China in 2004.
I was a beautiful, sunny, blue sky day - a rarity in Beijing we hear. There was, however, a fierce wind in the mountains where we walked on the wall. Dan bargained for a Beijing 2008 stocking cap from a vendor on the wall
Walking on the wall is extremely strenuous! The terrain is incredible hilly and the wall follows some very steep inclines. They say several milliion people worked to build the wall over 200 years, at least a million people died during its construction, and at its peak during the Ming Dynasty it was guarded by over one milliion soldiers.
I checked snopes.com for the veracity of the claim that the wall is the only man-made object visible from the moon. Status = False. Not visible from the moon and debatably visible from low earth orbit. Nonetheless, it is the longest and largest structure ever made by humans.
On the way back to Beijing, we stopped along the freeway to take a picture of the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium. Very cool building. It will hold 100,000 spectators and was constructed with 45,000 tons of steel. Credit to Wikipedia for the intriguing facts and figures.
Dan and Margarite arranged a driver and a tour guide through the hotel. The Badaling section of the wall is close to Beijing - only an hour drive from downtown. Our tour guide was a very enthusiastic narrator and so good at his job, that he was asked to give a tour to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, during the general's visit to China in 2004.
I was a beautiful, sunny, blue sky day - a rarity in Beijing we hear. There was, however, a fierce wind in the mountains where we walked on the wall. Dan bargained for a Beijing 2008 stocking cap from a vendor on the wall
Walking on the wall is extremely strenuous! The terrain is incredible hilly and the wall follows some very steep inclines. They say several milliion people worked to build the wall over 200 years, at least a million people died during its construction, and at its peak during the Ming Dynasty it was guarded by over one milliion soldiers.
I checked snopes.com for the veracity of the claim that the wall is the only man-made object visible from the moon. Status = False. Not visible from the moon and debatably visible from low earth orbit. Nonetheless, it is the longest and largest structure ever made by humans.
On the way back to Beijing, we stopped along the freeway to take a picture of the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium. Very cool building. It will hold 100,000 spectators and was constructed with 45,000 tons of steel. Credit to Wikipedia for the intriguing facts and figures.
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