Picked up by Rocky and driver for the trip to the Great Wall. Early morning Beijing traffic is not so bad. Drove out past the airport and was soon in the mountains. Not much to see except an impressive dam but we were going so fast there were no photo ops.
Arrived at the Huangyaguang section of the wall and was surprised to see that it was almost deserted. There were some tour groups leaving as we arrived but apart from that we must have seen about 6 people walking the wall at the same time as us. Rocky told us that most people choose to see the section closet to Beijing which is always packed with tourists.
There are approximately 22,000 km of wall but only 4,500 km are maintained by the state and accessible to the public. Walking the wall is definitely not ass easy as we thought it was going to be. Some sections are REALLY steep and slippery. Add to that the high temperatures (though not as hot as Beijing) and we had to keep stopping a lot.
There is a metal handrail for a lot of it but it was mostly too hot to hold. It's all very impressive to think that such a thing could actually be built. I wonder if the Donald will pull it off? The surprising thing was that the wall is not very high at some places so it must have needed a huge amount of manpower to guard it. Not a lot else to say about the wall.
I was very happy when the walk ended 3 hours later - we didn't expect it to be so tiring. You have to walk through a covered area to get to the exit and its a small market selling dried fruits and souvenirs. There are women sleeping behind each stall, but as soon as they hear someone enter they all leap up and start shouting, "mango, apple, you try, you try". After you walk past they all lie back down behind their stalls.
Lunch at a local restaurant which was surprisingly pretty good and very cheap. Though there were several things on the menu that we avoided.
Slept for most of the drive back to the hotel. Things we learned today from Rocky:
- foreigners can drive in China
- you can't drink the water in any of the big cities.
- a 25 square-metre apartment in Beijing costs approx £4,200 pa. The average annual salary in the private sector is approx £7,000 pa
- there is only one time zone for the whole of China
Nap time before heading out to see Tienanmen square tonight as we are told it looks much better after dark.
Didn't nap - jet lag causing havoc. After some beers in the hotel we decided to get the subway to Tienanmen Square but this greeted us when we got to the station so we walked.
There were soldiers at the entrance
As we were walking looking at a map we were approached by the first of the scammers for the evening - there were 3 in total. The first was a woman who said she was a high school teacher and could walk with us to the square and perhaps we could stop for some local beers and have a chat. I, of course, was falling for all this but David saw through her straight away. She was pretty insistent until David insisted that she go away.
On the way to the square we walked past a street full of labels
Scam number 2 was a man trying to sell day trips to the great wall. Number 3 was flogging calligraphy. But by now we were wise to it.
Then we came to an outdoor cooked food market serving all sorts of delights (or horrors depending on your perspective) which was packed.
Delicacies included scorpion kebabs (many of which were still alive).......
....which were then deep fried:
And bubbling drinks
In fact 99% of the food seemed to be deep fried. We tried a monster spring roll which was pretty bland but it did only cost 60p.
Walking on to the square you pass a lot of public toilets.
There are so many as many of the hutong dwellings
have no toilets so people have to use the public ones..
Finally made it to Tianenman Square which is very impressive at night but very hard to get a decent photo of.
You have to pass your bags through a scanner before you can enter the square. There is also an overhead camera suspended on wires that zooms around the square. Bad photo follows:
We decided to take the subway home which was much easier than we thought it was going to be. And very cheap - 70p for both of us.
Arriving back at our hotel station we decided to eat at the first place we came to and ended up here.
A dive but good food and again very cheap.
There are 23 million people in Beijing. As we were ending our meal, I looked up as someone was coming into the restaurant and lo and behold it was scammer number one. She took one look at us and left.
Back at the hotel. Still very hot outside. Forbidden City tomorrow.
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