The Ming Tombs are a distance out of town. We leave during the morning rush hour and get caught in some nasty traffic jams. The drivers seem more courteous than the drivers in Guangzhou do, less horn blowing and less multi-lane changes. Bad luck, our car cannot restart after the tollbooth. The toll booth workers push our car to a safe spot. An hour later a replacement car and a new driver arrive.
The Ming Tombs have burial areas for ten Emperors. Each one has underground chambers over a vast area. Each Emperor starts building his mausoleum early in his reign. Slave labor is used to build the biggest one that they can.
To get to the Tombs you walk down the Sacred Way.
The Sacred Way is two miles long. It is a straight path guarded by stone animals and officers paying homage to the dead Emperors. On each side of the path are the same statues: sitting lion, standing lion, sitting camel, standing camel, sitting elephant, standing elephant, sitting unicorn [very different from the European unicorn], standing unicorn, sitting horse, standing horse, military general and highest ranked official. Quite a walk in 35 degree heat. Each sculpture is at least life size.
We then drove to one of the burial hills. Nearly all of the Tombs have not been entered since the death of the Emperor. We then drove to the one Tomb that has been entered; many of the artifacts are in a museum above the original site.
Next we were taken for lunch at a government-approved restaurant for foreign visitors. Throughout our stay in Beijing we are only taken to government approved restaurants for foreign visitors. This arrangement was not visible in other cities. To get to the restaurant we had to walk through a maze of jade. The jade is very beautiful but we made it though the many persistent sales people to the dining room without any purchases.
After lunch we went to the highlight of the day, the Great Wall of China. We only saw one very small segment of the Wall, which was 10,000 KM in length. Each of the kingdoms before the first Qin dynasty had a wall around it. Qin connected the walls. His wall was only 6,000 KM long. Two extensions were made over the centuries that brought it to its full length. The Wall is very impressive and is built at the high points of the hills and mountains. Every 100 meters there is a structure for the archers. We purposely hiked up a portion that has very few visitors, in the other direction than the bus loads of people that were hiking. As we walked down and then up, we realized why most people went the other way. Some of the steps are over a foot higher than the previous step!
On the way back to the car, I got a case of fear of height, so I took a few of the larger steps on my butt. [Marsha was a real trooper today. She did all this with a weakening case of stomach distress.]
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