THE TOUR OF BEIJING
Tour participants: Guido & Magda, Jane, Ismail,
Lena, Susan & Richard, Helmut & Barbel, Richard, Ulf, Annie &
Edgar, and me. We were down to just nine for the last day of the tour.
I know we had breakfast in the hotel and that was
included in the price, lunch was included in the tour, but I am unsure about
dinner except for our Peking Duck dinner, which was included in the tour price.
I do remember that we ate so much at lunchtime that perhaps we did not feel we
needed to eat at night as well. Every
lunch, they would bring out several dishes and being the polite people we are
(most of us were taught that to leave food on your plate was an insult), we ate
everything, even down to the very last grain of rice. So, once we’d finished,
more dishes would come out, and again, we’d force it down. It was all very good
food, but just a lot of it. It was not until our third lunch that we were
informed that in China, if all the food is eaten, it is an insult to the host
as they have not given you enough. We all had that “A-ha” moment, and ate less,
hence leaving some food on the serving plates.
Friday started with all of us checking out of our
respective hotels and wondering how we were going to get our Yuan 1600 deposit back. As it turned out, it was fine. We had all duly checked our baggage into the
hotel baggage keeping department, as instructed. The tour guide arrived a little before nine,
which was a good thing as we were told to collect all our luggage as we were to
take it with us. We had a 32-seat bus
for the 14 of us, so, there was plenty of room for the bags underneath the bus.
Our first stop was supposed to be the Great Wall, however, our guide, Stephen Lee (just like Bruce Lee!) did his patriotic duty and took us to the Jade Factory, which was on the way, so it was OK! We were told that it was good luck to have at least one piece of Jade on you when you visited certain places, eg. Ming Tombs, etc, so we all bought a little something to ward off the evil spirits.
The Great Wall of China is the collective name of a series of fortification systems
generally built across the historical northern borders of China to
protect and consolidate territories of Chinese states and empires against various
nomadic groups of the steppe and their polities. The Wall was built from as
early as the 7th century BC all the way though to the most well-known
sections by the Ming dynasty from 1368–1644. Apart from defense, other
purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls, allowing the
imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road, regulation
or encouragement of trade and the control of immigration and emigration.
Furthermore, the defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by
the construction of watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling
capabilities through the means of smoke or fire, and the fact that the path of
the Great Wall also served as a transportation corridor. Collectively, the Ming
walls 8 850 km made up of 6,259 km sections of actual wall,
359 km of trenches and 2,232 km of natural defensive barriers such as
hills and rivers. Another archaeological survey found that the entire wall
with all of its branches measures 21,196 km. It was declared a UNESCO
World Cultural Heritage site in 1987.
The Ming tombs are a collection of mausoleums built by the emperors of the Ming
dynasty of China. The siting of the tombs was carefully chosen
according to Feng Shui principles. A 7km road named the "Spirit
Way" leads into the complex, lined with statues of guardian animals and
officials, with a front gate consisting of a three-arches, painted red, and
called the "Great Red Gate". The Spirit Way, or Sacred Way,
starts with a huge stone memorial archway lying at the front of the area.
Constructed in 1540, during the Ming dynasty, this archway is one of the
biggest stone archways in China today. The Ming Tombs were listed as a UNESCO World
Heritage Site in August 2003.
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