Great Wall of China

I am finally getting around to sorting out my photos from my China/ DPRK trip.  This is blip #2 of 14.

On this day I got to knock the Great Wall of China off my list of things to do.  It's an amazing feat, of course, of engineering, endurance, commitment, the will to get something done.  One cannot even begin to conceive how they carried all that rock and stone up those hills.

This part of the Wall that I visited is at Badaling.  This is one of two spots close to Beijing and consequently accessible in a day trip.  Thankfully it's also accessible by cablecar as climbing or walking along the wall is rather like walking back up the stands as the big match ends and the crowd starts leaving.  It's crowded everywhere and all the time and consequently not that easy to photograph.

There was a sign at the bottom of the Wall which boasted of something over 370 foreign statesmen having visited Badaling along with about 270 million other people since it opened to the public in 1957 (currently about 6 million visitors annually).

I took the train out to Badaling from Beijing North railway station along with hundreds of locals.  Maybe they had the same motivation in mind .. "to avoid the tour groups, see more of China, etc..".  There is a long queue for tickets (I learnt quickly that almost everything has a long queue in China).  Everyone is then penned up inside the station building.  The gates are opened about 10 minutes before departure which becomes a free for all as the crowd run down the platform to try and find a seat on the train (even more so coming back). It's chaotic and people were shouting at one another for about an hour out of Beijing about seats won or lost or groups separated.  Eventually the train conductor appeared and told the contestants (what I assumed was) to shut up or they would be thrown off the train. 

I've added 3 extras today to mark the occasion.