Day 1 in Beijing

We spent our first evening in Beijing walking around our hotel area on Wangfujing Street which is over 100 years old.  It's hard to tell that now with all the modern stores and buildings but there were a few areas that looked more traditional.  The street is closed to traffic and can get pretty busy but not nearly as busy as I was fearing Beijing might be! But then again we've been in Seoul long enough to be used to the Asian crowds I guess.  We ended up having dinner at an outdoor beer garden restaurant because we weren't really sure where else to go.  Beijing felt different from Seoul in the fact that it seemed like there was much less English writing around.  Menus and some signs were in both English and Mandarin but overall it seemed like less English than in Seoul.  Additionally, it was just weird not being able to read things.  We are so used to being able to read anything written in Korean, even when we can't understand the meaning, that it felt kind of weird not being able to read anything at times.

We got up early to have breakfast at our hotel before our tour guide and driver came to pick us up and take us on our first day of sightseeing.  Our first stop was the Temple of Heaven.  Originally built in the 1400s, the Temple of Heaven is where the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties of ancient China would go to pray to the god of grain for a good harvest or the god of rain during a season of drought.  Many buildings and things on the temple grounds are original and over 600 years old.  It was interesting to see how the numbers 3 and 9 were built into many parts of the temple.  Three signified heaven, the world and the earth while nine was simply a lucky number in ancient China so there were places that had exactly nine steps or nine rows of nine nails in the doors.  There were also three paths leading to some of the different areas around the temple.  The middle path was only for God so no one ever walked on it.  The path on the right side was for the emperor and the path on the left side was for the impure family members.  The servants had to walk on the very outer edges.  It was kind of cool to actually be walking and seeing things that are really 600 years old.  In Seoul, the palaces have very few parts that are actually original due to the Japanese destroying as much as they could during their occupation of Korea in the 1900s. 

After we left the Temple of Heaven we had our first authentic Chinese meal.  We were a bit worried about the food because many of the Koreans whom we talked to said they didn't like the food in China much at all.  Well our opinion was a bit different.  We loved it!!!  Yes some of it was super greasy but it was delicious and there was SO many different things to choose from (very different from Korea!!).  We ordered two different pork dishes, fried rice and asparagus lettuce (whatever that is, it's good too).  It was all delicious and we got way too full right before it was time to go to the Great Wall.

After lunch came the part we had been waiting for... the Great Wall of China!  There are a few different places people can access the great wall.  We chose to go to the Mutianyu section because we had read it was much less busy than another section closer to Beijing.  We took a cable car up to the wall and started walking.  Our guide gave us a bit of history about the wall.  The wall is believed to be well over 8000 kilometers long.  Most of the wall was built during the Ming Dynasty in the 14th century, though some parts were started the BC era.  Many people died while working to build the wall and at that time people thought dead bodies made good building material so there are (or at least were) even dead bodies within the wall.  The Ming Dynasty built the wall mainly to protect against the Mongol invasions.  There are thousands of watchtowers along the wall where people would watch to make sure no invaders were coming.  If they saw something they would light a fire and when the smoke was seen from the person at the next watch tower, they would light a fire too and it would keep going in order to notify the Chinese troops of a possible invasion.  Today a lot of the wall is in ruins but there are still several areas the public can go to climb on the wall.  The day we went was a bit foggy so we probably didn't have the best views but we still thought they were amazing!  It was quite a hike at times.  The last bit we did was a hike up nearly 500 steps to a watchtower.  It was a bit brutal, especially going back down when our legs felt like jello, but we felt pretty accomplished!  There were very few people climbing the wall which was also nice.

The Great Wall was about 60 kilometers outside of Beijing and by the time we got back to our hotel we were completely exhausted from our hike and in desperate need of a shower.  But we had accomplished the one thing we never would have thought we would ever do by spending a few hours hiking the Great Wall of China!

 Spectacular views

Of course I had to haggle with a hawker on the way back down to get a shirt that says "I climbed the Great Wall."