The Great Wall!

We were very excited to be visiting the Great Wall today.  First, we visited the Temple of Heaven.  The temple was built during the Ming Dynasty.  The Emperor used the temple to pray to the heavens for a good harvest of crops.  There was one ceremony in the Spring and one in the Fall.  It was beautiful.

After visiting the Temple of Heaven, we had a long drive to the section of the Great Wall we were going to visit.  We visited the Mutianyu section which our guide was proud to tell us was the same section Michelle Obama and her daughters visited when they visited China several years earlier.  The hill up to the wall was quite steep.  We walked up a big hill and then took a cable car the rest of the way.  There were people who hiked the stairs the whole way, but we were glad for a ride for part of the way.  

     We were lucky it was a nice, clear day.  The weather could not have been more perfect.  We had a great view.  Our guide gave us two choices of which way to go, we could go to the left which was slightly shorter, but the end had a steep set of stairs and was more challenging, or we could go to the right which was a little longer with an easier terrain.  Charlotte immediately said she wanted a challenge.  We are used to hills and steps, so were fine with that.  On the way back, our guide told Tom that most people choose to go to the right.  The kids both did great!  Charlotte needed a few rest breaks on the final set of steps at the end, but I was happy to take those with her.  Tommy was too busy counting the number of steps to take a break.  It was much easier going down!  

  

The Great Wall was built starting in 220 BCE by Qin Shi Huang to provide protection from invading Mongolians.  The wall was extended and improved during the Ming Dynasty.  It is amazing to think this whole thing was built by hand.  It is estimated over 1 million people worked on the Great Wall, over 700,000 of them were prisoners.  They say that 10 steps equals a life, meaning for every 10 steps you take, someone died building the Great Wall.  Most of them were buried inside the wall.  Tommy told me at one point he thought maybe he saw a skeleton, but I told him it wasn't possible.  

The cherry blossoms were beautiful

We took many steps that day, but were so glad to have seen it.  Even though it is just a wall, it is an amazing sight, especially when you think about how many years ago it was built.  Our guide told us that there is a Chinese proverb that you are not a man until you have walked on the Great Wall.  He congratulated us on becoming true men (and women) that day.
After the Great Wall, we ate hot pot for dinner, another must eat in Beijing.  You get a pot of boiling water on your table and you order raw meats and vegetables to cook in it.  Then you dip the food in sauces and eat them.  We tried beef, chicken, and squid, a requests of Charlotte's.  The squid was easy to lose in the bottom of the pot and got chewy if we left it in too long.  We didn't like hot pot as much as Peking duck, but it was a fun experience.

hot pot