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The Great Wall of China

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Sonja and I have been blessed with the privilege of visiting some of the most fascinating and impressive places in the world. None more so than the Great Wall of China. Think about what you knew of this man-made marvel. As kids, we knew it was in China and that it was built a long time ago. Once we got there, what blew us away was... it's about 2700 years old. They didn't have any construction equipment back then. This was all built by hand and manual labor. It's 20-23 feet high and the total length is over 13,000 miles long! 13,000! That's half the length of the equator and is the longest feat of human engineering in history. To get to the wall, it's about an hour or two outside of Beijing. The drive is fairly bland until you begin to get peeks of the wall. We started out here... We ended up at that red building up top. And, it was not a subtle climb... And my darling wife, believes we can climb anything. As you can see, I think I survived. We receive...
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Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City

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During our stay in Beijing, we visited three landmarks. Temple of Heaven, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Temple of Heaven Wikipedia says "The Temple of Heaven is a complex of imperial religious buildings situated in the southeastern part of central Beijing. The complex was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for a good harvest." For every location we went to in China, the street hawkers and beggars were ever present. Tiananmen Square For those of us old enough to remember, Tiananmen Square will forever be known as the site of the massacre of protesters in 1989. This famous photo shocked the world when on June 5th, a lone protester stood down the tanks. The short version of what happened is that the Communist Party was divided between those urging more rapid change and hardliners wanting to maintain strict state control. After the death of one of the politicians leading the change, protesters began to ga...
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Jade Factory

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If you participate in any type of formal touring in China, built into the itineraries are stops at different commercial venues such as the jade factory. Even with the slightly elevated sales pressure to buy souveniers, it is still a very interesting and informative stop. And, yes, we did come home with a jade souvenier. ;-)
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