The Great Wall.

Another “catch up” post. There’s so much happening here so quickly and so constantly that I think the blog will never be 100% up to date…

So last weekend we finally took the girls to the Great Wall. We were lucky to do this with our neighbors Jack and Cherie who’ve been living in China with their two little boys for several years. They’ve been critical to our adjustment here and are always around to help us figure out the latest glitch in our lives and in apartment 1705. It helps that Jack is Chinese and speaks Mandarin, but mostly it helps that they are super friendly, thoughtful, good people. They’re also a fun family, and their own boys had never been to the Wall, so this was an equally exciting adventure for them.

A private van picked us up at 7am, and the 9 of us (Jack’s aunt came along too) took off for the Badaling section of the Wall which is a little more than an hour from our apartment. Badaling is a popular tourist spot, just a little further along, and higher up, than the spot we visited 6 years ago. And it starts with… a cable car ride to the top. I swear there are more cable cars in China than…

What you don’t realize and/or what you forget, is that most of the wall is not flat on top. It never really levels out anywhere. Instead it’s a steep climb either up or down, walking on either uneven stone steps or a steep stone ramp… with an occasional pass through a lookout tower. It’s quite a workout. And it is SO amazing. And it is SO inspiring. And such a glorious piece of Chinese history that you can’t help but feel humbled by it all. It’s over 5,500 miles long and of course we saw only a mere snippet of it. But I think the girls were impressed. Jack also told them the famous Chinese folktale of Meng Jiangnv and her missing husband who died while building the wall… and ended up being buried inside of it. Only no one knew exactly where he was buried…. so she cried in sorrow, endless tears, for three days and nights until part of the wall collapsed and his body was found. I’m not sure what impressed Elle more, the wall itself or the story. She keeps asking about how this man died and how they buried him in the wall…

I could have stayed longer, but with four kids and a decent crowd on the wall, a couple of hours was just about right.

We took the cable car back down, though for the record, there are other options. One being a hike down the mountain, the other being a sort of toboggan slide ride (maybe next time).

We stopped for lunch and then a quick visit to the Ming Tombs where we threw money at the emperor’s throne and let the kids run around the park-like grounds…

A great day in China…