Beijing Part 1

Friday morning we left early for Beijing.

In Mandarin, "bei" means "north" and "jing" means "capital," so Beijing literally means "northern capital."

2000 or so years ago, when the Qin dynasty was first founded, their capital city was Xi'an. Xi'an was closer to central China, near the Yellow River. This was the major area of ancient Chinese civilization, sort of an Oriental Mesopotamia. Subsequent dynasties would move the capital of their empires and Nanjing or "south capital" served off-and-on as a capital city for a while until the selection of Beijing. That is somewhat simplified as the capital moved around depending on the dynasty in charge and the threat from outside forces. For more information, try -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_capitals_of_China .

When we arrived in Beijing, we first visited the Ming Tombs, home to the burial sites of 13 of the 16 emperors who ruled during the Ming dynasty. The walk to the tombs was guarded by stone carvings of warriors and both real and mythical animals. The tomb itself, was actually somewhat less impressive than the walk as everything that was originally inside has now been moved to museums. It was mainly a walk through an empty underground chamber with a box where the Emperor's coffin used to be and a stone throne that was placed in the tomb with him.

After leaving the tombs, we traveled to the Great Wall. It had been raining lightly all morning and luckily the rain stopped for our walk along the wall. The fog that was left after the rain made for a cool afternoon, though it made for lower visibility for pictures.

The Great Wall itself was very impressive. To me, it alone is worth a trip to Beijing. Outside of the city there are a few restored sections of the Great Wall that you can visit and we went to the most popular, Badaling Pass. This is the site where foreign dignitaries walk along the wall when they visit China. The wall is massive, stretching across the mountainous landscape for as far as the eye can see. We probably climbed along 3-4 miles (round trip) of the wall over a three hour period. At times the wall can be very steep, making climbing quite difficult. One section that we did not hike along is built at over a 60-degree incline.

So far, I've been having difficulty uploading pictures, but I hope to get some of the Great Wall up soon. Unfortunately, pictures alone are not really able to do justice to the wall and it is really something that you have to see for yourself to understand the scale of it.

After eating dinner, we checked into the four-star TianTan Hotel (near the Temple of Heaven, which is currently undergoing renovation). The hotel was extremely nice and a great break from the bare accommodations of our dorms. There was actually a large bath tub and toilet (where you could flush the toilet paper) in addition to somewhat comfortable beds where we could enjoy a good night's sleep after a long day.

To be continued...