Kosher Travel with Fran and David: China 3

Shavua tov to all

We had a very nice Shabbat here in Beijing...any thoughts that we had about losing weight have disappeared over this Shabbat as the amount of food served at the Chabad house put all those diet dreams to rest....well, we are leaving Beijing early tomorrow morning and maybe we can begin to eat a little less as we will be without any Kosher restaurants until next Shabbat.

But more details on Shabbat later....we are still filling in the blanks from this past Wednesday.

We were met early Wednesday morning at our hotel by Lisa and her driver. Lisa's English was quite good and we headed north to the Great Wall. There are a number of locations within a 90 minute drive from Beijing where you can access the wall. Lisa advised us that we would be going to the Mutianyo section of the wall, which is less travelled by tourists.

The drive north took us on major expressways for about 45 minutes, climbing all the time and then as we could see the mountain ranges looming in front of us, we exited onto a two lane road that took us ever higher in the hills till we reached the Mutianyo Tourist Area. We got there quite early as the parking lot was quite empty and the long line of tourist souvenir shoppes was just beginning its daily trade.

When you reach the entrance, you can see parts of the wall peeking out at you high above you and in order to access the wall, you have to ascend steeply by cable car. We had elected to go up by cable car and down by toboggan on a winding steel track.

Lisa went up with us and when we reached the wall at the top, she said goodbye; meet you at the bottom; and we walked up the stairs till we arrived on the Great Wall of China.

A few interesting facts about the Great Wall:

The Great Wall of China is the longest man-made structure in the world, stretching 6000 kilometres or 3728 miles long which makes it longer than the distance from coast to coast in Canada. The width of the great wall varies from 4,6 to 9,1 meters (15 to 30 feet) at the base and from 2.7 to 3.7 meters (from 9 to 12 feet) at the top. Watchtowers, guard towers, beacon towers, stairways, bridges and battlements.rise above the wall at certain points.

The wall was originally built by Chinese royals who had figured out that physical barriers were a good defense against invaders. Measuring 20 feet high, it was tall enough to stop even the most determined of invaders. Swords and spears could only do so much against a giant barrier of tightly-packed earth.

Nomadic tribes from territories now a part of Mongolia and Manchuria often swooped down marauding into the areas ruled by the emperor. In 221, B.C., Qin Shi Huang conquered all the surrounding states and united them under his empire. He destroyed walls between states and ordered the main wall along the northern border of the territory to be extended.

The wall was repaired and rebuilt over the years, as it's construction of mud, gravel, and wood, made repairs necessary. The wall that is seen today was mainly built by the Ming Dynasty in the 1400's CE, using stronger elements such as bricks and stone, making for a much more permanent structure.

The effort was costly in materials and manpower. Over the years, millions of people worked on building the wall, with the manpower coming from frontier guards, peasants, unemployed intellectuals, disgraced noblemen, and convicts. In fact, there existed a special penalty during the Qin and Han dynasties under which convicted criminals were made to work on the Wall.

During its construction, the Great Wall was called “the longest cemetery on earth” because so many people died building it. Reportedly, it cost the lives of more than one million people, and they were buried beside the wall, at the point at which they died.

As weapons improved, the wall became less protective and losing its political importance, fell into disrepair.

The last battle fought at the wall was in 1938 during the Sino-Japanese War, and contrary to popular myth, you can't see the Great Wall of China from space. William Lindesay, a British long distance runner, hiked about 1500 miles of the Great Wall in 1987. Then he sat down and wrote a book called “Alone on the Great Wall”.

The Chinese say the Great Wall is a dragon winding over the mountains. When you look at pictures you can see that's a fact. It really does look like a dragon.

These days the Great Wall of China serves as a tourist attraction and important historical landmark. Millions of visitors, as many as 40 million a year, come from all around the world to walk its long, crumbling path - the path of ancient warriors. It's a site of history and cultural significance the likes of which we're unlikely to see again.

We arrived at the top and began to walk along its length, marvelling at the way it would along the tops of the mountains that form the northern border of China. The two and a half km. section of the Great Wall at has 22 watchtowers built at almost 100 meter intervals, which is much more than along other visitor sites at the Wall and we spent time climbing to the tops of these towers to admire the changing vistas visible from the heights of the towers.

After walking for quite a distance on the undulating wall, we decided to head down. We had paid for the toboggan ride; really a little wheeled cart that runs along a metal track where the driver has a control bar to either brake or speed up. It was quite a lot of fun....finally reaching the bottom, where surprise of surprise, you are deposited in the midst of the "gift shop", actually a mini shuk or market, where I finally had the chance to begin practicing the art of bargaining....and could also practice my swordsmanship!