Wonders of the World

During our time in Beijing, we climbed atop the longest cemetery in the world, otherwise known as the Great Wall of China. That last tidbit of information our tour guide was kind enough to inform us of on the bus ride there. My apologies to the one million Chinese peasants for disrespecting their informal gravesite. 

Sorry, not sorry. It was pretty cool.

 Honestly, I was kind of expecting the Great Wall's majesty to be inflated by it's hype and mass tourism. Most of the rest of the sites we visited were slightly disappointing; however, I was pleasantly taken off guard by the simple grandeur of the Wall.

Photo cred to Jessica Parker, who lugged around her big, fancy camera all vacation. 

Our hike on the great wall began after we took a cable car to a popular starting point. The stretch of the wall that we climbed boasted the highest point of the entire Great Wall. I think I was able to actually appreciate the wall more as it was necessary to quite literally climb at some points. Due to the welcome cold weather in Beijing, we had brought coats; 10 minutes into the hike, coats were shed and people were panting. 

Like any good thing, the Great Wall is in a constant state of repair.

Scattered throughout the wall were these old ladies selling ridiculously overpriced beverages and offering contrived Kodak moments such as the example shown above. $10 water bottle anyone? What amazed me was that they made the climb to their designated area twice each day. Gotta admire the entrepreneurial spirit of elderly Chinese women. 

 On the same tour as us was quite an assortment of foreign nationalities. While climbing the especially arduous parts of the Wall, I passed the time by learning to count to ten in both Thai and Hebrew from a couple of friendly Israelis we met.

It was fun to meet and talk to this group of students at a Hong Kong International University. They were mostly from  western European countries. 

 We spent about an hour climbing to the highest point of the Wall, admiring the incredible view (hampered by some fog), trying to wrap our minds around the enormity of it all, and taking advantage of some perfect picture spots.

Global wonders call for jazz hands. 

In Xi'an we went to visit what the Chinese like to refer to as the Eight Wonder of the World.

In 1974, a poor farmer discovered one of the world's largest tombs built for a single person- the Terracotta Army constructed to protect the first Emperor of unified China, Qin Shi Huang. 10 years later, Judy Batschi was among the earliest Americans to discover said tomb. 40 years later, I marveled at the narcissism and paranoia it would take to order over 8,000 workers to craft a warrior in their own likeness, bury those warriors in your own tomb to protect you in the afterlife, and then kill said workers in an effort to keep secret the location of your tomb. Some secrets can be too well kept.

This was the first Terracotta warrior that was found in the tomb pits. 

So far, three pits full of warriors, horses, and chariots have been discovered. Unfortunately, the roof of the first pit caved in, leaving a graveyard of broken clay men. I found this first pit to be more eerie than the rest; it was like looking at corpses covered in dust, the carvings are that realistic. 

This site is supposedly the oldest brick wall ever
found in China. 

Frankly, one of the best parts of the tour was our straight-to-the-point tour guide, Lady Jaja. She had the most hilarious way of rounding up her brood of non-Chinese tourists and giving her information in the most direct and unembellished way possible. What more can you ask for?