Olivia goes to China: The Great Wall & Ming Tombs

"He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man" - Mao

On Saturday, I went to the Great Wall with Lili, Hailei, Jing, Ann and Adam. We took a minibus from the office that drove us all the way to Badaling, about 70km from Beijing. This is the most high-profile and most-photographed part of the wall and rises at 1000m above sea level. On the way there, Lili gave us some background history about Beijing and the Great Wall. She used to be a tourist guide when she was a student and didn't lose too much of her knowledge. It was very impressive! Once we got there - it was absolutely freezing by the way - we bought our tickets and jumped in a little wagon on rails that took us up the starting point of the great climb.

The entrance at Badaling

Saving our energy for later...

Hailei, Ann, OC, Adam (+Jing taking the picture)
"We made it!"

This is pretty steep!

The Olympics are EVERYWHERE!!!

I have to admit, this was quite tough but I'm happy I did it! However, the way down turned out to be more difficult than the way up. Very strenuous and exhausting overall! My legs ended up shaking on their own when we returned to the ground :)

Now you can enjoy a 360° view of the Great Wall...

After that, we went to visit a "Cloisonne factory". "Cloisonné", in French, describes something that has fences or walls around it. In Chinese, it's an ancient handcraft art that originated during the Yuan Dynasty but prevailed in the Ming Dynasty (around 1450) and consists of enameling vases, plates, bowls and various other pieces of decoration using metallic wires.

After a well-deserved very heavy lunch above the factory store, we headed to the Ming tombs and visited Ding Ling which is the mausoleum of the 13th emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yi Jun, who ruled for 48 years!