We set off a little earlier on the Sunday, to go to the Great Wall. It was raining in the morning (the previous day had been misty but dry), so Regina suggested we went to the Ming Tombs first, and the Great Wall in the afternoon, as the forecast was for the rain to stop around lunch. We stopped off at a Jade factory where they carve the Jade into various intricate designs, and jewelry pieces. Jade us a very hard rock, and is carved using a diamond tipped grinder. This is the same method as was used historically, except that the grinder would have been pedal powered. A pattern started to emerge as the assistant proceeded to encourage us to by things. "Only 1200 yuan for this beautiful generation ball." The generation balls were indeed beautiful, but £120 pounds for a souvenir was far out of our spending bracket! When we started looking at the smaller trinkets, the assistant quickly moved on to find other prey!
The Ming tombs were as you would expect ostentatious. Feng Shui experts were sent out by the Emperor to find a suitable location, and a valley was found with a large mountain to the North, and smaller mountains to the East and West. This is apparently auspicious since the large mountains symbolise the Dragon, and the East and West symbolising the Tiger and something else which I forget. This is actually the same pattern as in the common housing in the Hutong area, where the buildings to the North of the courtyard are taller than the others, and is the residence of the head of the household.
There are only 13 emperors buried in the entire valley, and the size of the graves border on the ridiculous. The largest of these is guarded by a large entrance building, similar to the entrance buildings in the palaces of yesterday, and then you reach the gravestone. This is around 5-6 meters tall, and protected by a tower that was built around it. Past the tower is the burial mound, which is a man made hill above a network of tunnels containing the body and a large quantity of treasure. The tunnels have not been fully excavated, and are not open to the public, but some of the treasures found to date are on display in the entry building to this tomb, and include lots of jade jewelry and crowns, gold and silver ingots and of course Ming Vases.
Only the Emperor and the Empress are allowed to share a tomb, the concubines of the Emperor are not. One story we were told is that one of the Emperors died early, and since none of his concubines, 7 young ladies, had given birth, they were made to commit ritual suicide. While the Empress when she died was allowed to share the tomb with the Emperor, the bodies of the concubines were dumped in a nearby grave, the location of which has never been found.
We next took a walk down the Sacred Way, once the only way in to the Tomb area. It is a long and beautiful walkway lined with pairs of statues of animals and monsters, and fronted by a large entry tower.
After lunch of Chinese food and Tea (and a beer for me; "Why are you obsessed with beer?" William asked me - cheeky sod!) we drove to the Great Wall of China. The Great Wall of China is around 7000km in length, so we decided to just do some of it. The wall, as most people have seen in pictures, is broken up by regular towers. The part we climbed is very popular, as it is steep and brings excellent views of the mountains and the countryside below all the way to Beijing. There are all of the trappings of a tourist location here - stalls selling "I climbed the Great Wall" T-shirts and mugs being the most prevalent. The steps up to the first tower were heaving with people climbing up and back down again, but once we got past that, the number of tourists diminished by about 75% having bought their T-shirts and had enough of the climbing! Past the 3rd tower were a mere handful of die-hards soldiering on upwards.
The steps in parts, especially up to about the 4th tower were not just steep, but very tall - William had to climb up using his hands and feet in several places! At the third tower we came level with a Pagoda off on the hillside to the right, and up at the 5th or 6th tower (I lose count precisely), we found a small pathway back down the mountain in the direction of the Pagoda. It was really pleasant following this path down to the Pagoda, as there was not a soul on it apart from us, and from the Pagoda we could see the lower reaches of the Wall heaving with ant-like figures. We headed, back up the pagoda path, and then raced back down the Wall, as we'd told the Tour guide we'd just be an hour and a half up and back, and we were a little late! The diversion was well worth it though, as there's nothing worse than being somewhere as beautiful as this amongst a horde of puffing tourists. William put 99% of the people on the wall that afternoon to shame, storming up and down the wall with few rests, no complaints and a real spirit of adventure!
Back to Beijing, and we were taken to Dr Tea's Tea Emporium where we were shown the Chinese Tea Ceremony, and got to taste several different teas. All very interesting and nice, but of course marred by the now familiar post demonstration chants of "Buy buy buy!"
To finish the afternoon, we went to a Kung Fu show, again our guide got us great seats at the front of the non-VIP section, and the demonstration was great. William was as enthralled as he had been at the acrobats, with displays of the many different animal styles, weapons displays, wood breaking, and the speciality - breaking an iron bar with their heads! A quick meal at the hotel buffet followed by bed, and a lie in and lazy day waiting for us in the morning!
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