Adventures in CHINA
Trip to the Great Wall
Our first trip outside of Tianjin took us to the Great Wall at Huan Ya Guan. We went with our friends Mike and Laura with the help of our hired driver Mr. Wu. Our first stop was the city of Jixian where we visited the Dule Temple, home of the largest terra-cotta statue in China - (it's really big - maybe 30 feet tall). The story goes that the terra cotta statue is a guilt driven replacement that a warlord had made after he carted off the original golden one and then couldn't drum up the funds to replace it once bad qi set in.
As we left the temple, we were stopped by a local TV crew who asked if we would let them film us as they asked our thoughts on the temple. We were spotted on TV by our co-workers several weeks later.
This is the street market scene in Jixian, home of the famous Dule Temple.
After a great lunch of probably a dozen dishes, we piled back into Mr. Wu's car for the ride up to the Great Wall at Huan Ya Guan. This portion of the great wall sees almost no western tourists and was a real treat.
We climbed up the wall, which is set in a very mountainous area, until we had reached not only a great view, but great exhaustion as well! The individual steps are quite tall and therefore you get to work muscles in a way that you probably shouldn't. As we descended, our legs were shaking and we had to be real careful not to trip as a fall may have meant a fun-filled adventure to a local hospital.
You can see how mountainous this region is, parts of the wall here are very old.
When we returned to the base where our car was parked, Camille got to ride a camel - the two humped variety. As soon as she got up on the camel, she proceeded to ride away much to the chagrin of the lady camel handler. Camille had no problem getting that camel to follow her instructions, not too surprisingly. We then both took a couple of spins around the village on some sturdy Mongolian ponies and ended up back at the car to share a bottle of wine, cheese, and crackers with our cohorts and celebrate the end of a great day.
Here's the camel that Camille had WAY too much fun riding!