Beijing - day 13

OK, this has been a fun day and I’m afraid this will be a record long blog. Plenty of pictures though. I had to get up early this morning in order to catch the tour bus. I decided to skip breakfast and sleep a few minutes longer. That was just fine since my stomach hasn’t been quite the same since Wednesday. The bus was a bit late and as I was standing there waiting one of the concierge guys comes out with what looked like a cross between a badminton racket and a tennis racket. What it actually was was a bug zapper. The strings in the racket were electrodes and if they swung the racket at a bug flying around the wires fried the little critter. I really want one, it looked so fun. I also figured something out while I was waiting. I’ve always wondered why all of the factories I’ve visited here have such dirty windows. I was looking at the hotels windows wondering why they didn’t wash them when it dawned on me. It’s the pollution in the air. What clued me in was how clear and blue the sky was. It has rained so much this week that the rain has washed the pollution out of the sky. I was quite excited; it was a clear and sunny day for our tour. How lucky, WRONG. By the time we got to Beijing it was raining again. The bus ride to Beijing is two and a half hours so I had time to catch up on my sleep. It was strange though, we passed a big truck that had ran into the ditch. It was a perfectly straight road and it looked like he just turned into the ditch. Then, just a few miles further, there was another truck just like the first one. Our driver was a maniac. He made the trip in record time but part of the time he was driving on the wrong side of the road. I was sitting by a window on the right side of the bus and I’m half conscious sort of gazing out of the window when I see the truck beside us moving toward us. Of course I expected him to stop but he didn’t and I literally jumped out of the seat so I wouldn’t get hit by flying glass or worse. At the last second the bus driver swerved and started honking but I’m serious when I tell you the truck was no more than three inches from my window. The only reason the mirrors didn’t hit was because the truck was ahead of us and our mirror was up high above the truck. As we were passing through Beijing we passed the baseball park where the Olympics will be played and the athletes village, which is a series of major huge apartment buildings. In the distance was the birdsnest. Too far for a decent picture but I’ve included a picture of it from my hotel window the last time I was in Beijing. Our first stop in Beijing was the Jade place. I was planning on buying some souvenirs here but it was a state run place and VERY expensive. I’m sure I could get the same thing in the states for those prices. A jade bracelet was $2 medals, I thought you would find them interesting. The metals are all inlaid with jade. Cool eh? They had some very intricate statues here and some of them were actually pretty cool. In the picture of me with the Jade horses you can see how big some of them are. They had statues of tigers (looked like the BYU cougar statue to me), boats, pagoda’s etc. In case you want to pick up the horses I’m standing by they can be yours for a mere $100,000US. A little out of my budget. Out in front of the Jade place they had the lions guarding the door. I’ve explained before that they female is always on the right and has a baby lion under her paw and the male is on the left and has a ball under his paw. The ball is supposed to represent the world. After the Jade place it was lunch and then on the Ming Tombs. So the Ming dynasty rule during the 1400’s and 1500’s and included sixteen emperors. The last thirteen of them are buried in this valley north of Beijing.00US. That’s crazy, this is supposed to be China. They did have some pretty amazing carvings though. I watched a guy carve one of those balls inside a bigger ball inside a bigger ball etc. The guy in the picture who’s carving jade is making one of those balls. I could actually make one of those now. I guess Jade is considered very valuable in this country. They actually believe it has healing powers. The guide was telling us that Chinese scientists have been studying how this is possible and they have now figured it out. You see, Jade is underground for thousands of years and so during that time it absorbs these minerals and that is how it can heal you. I guess than might make some sense if you actually eat it but I’m not sure how those minerals can help you if all you do is wear a jade necklace or ring or sleep with a jade pillow. Can you believe that? Some people actually sleep on a jade pillow. I’ve included a picture of the Olympic They picked this spot because it has good Feng Shuey (I have no idea how to spell that). On the east of the valley are the dragon mountains so called because they look like a dragon (if you have a really good imagination). On the west are the tiger mountains, can you guess why? Again, you need a really good imagination. The mountains on the north are supposed to look like something else; I didn’t quite hear what she said. Apparently, when the emperor died they built these tombs and built a village next door that was supposed to be the guardian for the tomb. These guardians have done such a good job that none of these tombs have been raided or vandalized in any way. Pretty cool eh? In the 1950’s the government decided to excavate one of the tombs and the last dude to die was the one chosen. When they opened it up it had plenty of treasures including silk and it was all perfectly preserved except the silk quickly disintegrated. This bothered them so bad that they have decided to not excavate the other tombs. That seems a bit dumb to me because I’m sure they can now figure out how they could preserve the silk just fine. Probably better than it is doing underground. Oh well, it is pretty cool to see this one and I doubt the others are much different. So they start with a huge rectangular wall enclosing an area probably a couple dozen acres. You enter though a gate on one end and then walk through a sort of chapel where you can come and worship your ancestors. The gate and chapel have both been destroyed leaving only the floor and the stubs of the columns. Apparently the Ming emperor number seventeen was a bit of a jerk and peasants rebelled. The chapel and gate were destroyed in the uprising. So much for the guardian village. After the chapel you pass the museum and gift shops (which I don’t think were there originally and then you come to the tomb. The way they do this is build a palace, which doesn’t look much like a palace to me. At the foot of the main chamber is a rear chamber about the size of the smaller ones but it is at right angles to the big chamber. The big chamber was for the emperor and the two smaller ones are for his two wives. I guess he only had one wife (plus hundreds of concubines) but she never bore him any children. When one of his concubines gave him a son she got a promotion to wife number two. Once they’ve built these chambers they built a circular wall around the whole thing about one hundred feet high and then fill the whole thing up with dirt. The wall is circular because a circle represents heaven and of course the emperor was a god who came to earth and when he died he was returning to heaven from where he came. On top of the dirt theyIt has a central chamber, which is about twenty feet wide by about a hundred feet long and then on either side of this chamber are two smaller chambers which are mirror images of each other. then build a temple that has a tombstone in the middle of it. I kid you not, it looks just like a tombstone but it is about twenty feet tall. The one picture is us walking on top of the tall circular wall. While standing on this wall we looked out over the countryside and you can see another tomb in the distance. That tomb is this guy’s dad. Ming number fifteen. The museum had many of the original artifacts. The throne and the vase and candlesticks you see in the one picture are the actual ones that were there. An actual, pristine Ming vase. Pretty cool. You can also see the gold and silver ingots that were there. This was actual currency they used but very large denominations that the average Joe would never get to see. One of those gold bars would have bought a house. It would buy a lot more than a house now days. The coffins were in these large red boxes. That is exactly what it looked like, a large red box. They didn’t look old to me so I asked if they were the originals. The tour guide looked all embarrassed but I guess in the sixties (the decade after the tombs were excavated) China’s economy went through some pretty hard times. So bad in fact that the locals scrounged what ever they could and they got a hold of the coffins and used them for firewood. Ooops. When they excavated the tomb they found the walls in several places but they couldn’t find any place to enter the tomb. They were really worried about traps that may have been set too. Finally they found a door and they cleared out the dirt and opened it up. Take a look at how they built the hinge for the door. The whole thing is one huge piece of stone. That is quite a door. The diamond shaped entrance is where they entered the tomb and is just outside the big gate. There were no booby traps. You’ll have to forgive the pictures. I wasn’t about to bring my cool camera on this trip so I have our little cheapo thing. There were plenty of lights in the tombs but not enough for the camera and it’s little flash couldn’t quite do the job. So after the tombs it was only a few minutes to the wall. The wall was started over 2,700 years ago. At first it was various segments where they needed them most and then over the next few centuries they were extended until they all connected and they ended up as one continuous wall that is over 6,000 km long. Parts of the wall were actually falling into disarray before another emperor came along to rebuild the old walls and then add to them. They are still not all rebuilt but they have many places like this one where tourist can come and see them. It is kind of funny when you think about it. The original wall was built by hand and even now with all our modern equipment, renovating the wall still has to be done by hand because the machine doesn’t exist that can go up this mountain. This piece of wall was a very steep one. Last time I was here the wall I saw was much more level but this sucker climbed straight up the crazy mountain. To go from where we were to the top of the ridge was 1,800 steps. These aren’t normal steps either. Do you see that picture of me standing on the stairs? Do you see how the step comes up almost to my knees? That’s a big step. There were about thirty people on our bus and only four of us made it to the top. It wasn’t real hot but it was very humid. Reminded me of Florida. The hike to the top was no worse than one of my three-mile runs but I sweat like a pig on those runs and I don’t wear street clothes when I run. Boy was I sweating. It was embarrassing. In the picture of me standing by the wall I was at the top. I’m standing on the roof of the guard house that is on the peak of the mountain. If you look you can see my chest is all wet. Well, that was only the beginning. I didn’t want to include the picture of me sitting in the window sill because I have a stunned look on my face but I wanted you to see how much wetter my shirt is and this on the way down when things were easy. By the time I hit the bottom my shirt was completely wet. The rain had quit but you can see that visibility was the pits. It was still absolutely gorgeous though and a real cool experience. I’m sure you all know this but since I was there I have to say it. The great wall of China is the only man made object that you can see from space. Pretty cool eh? I actually think that may not be true any more. I think you can see the three gorges dam from space too. Funny how that is in China too. After we got down off the wall we went for dinner. I thought I would show you the entrance to the better restaurants around here. They have all these fish tanks in them where you can pick out your dinner before you go sit down. I was really bummed, after dinner we were supposed to go to a street market. I still don’t have everything for the family and I was going to pick up a few more things tonight. They had very little to choose from in Tianjin and so I figured I would finish it up tonight. Well, they cancelled the trip. Now what am I going to do? The tour people picked out our hotel tonight so I was quite concerned about what I my room was going to be like. Especially since it only cost about $60US a night. I’m pleasantly surprised but it is really odd. The picture is from the front door. Do you see the glass shower right in the middle of the room? I’ve got the door open and you can see right through the shower to my bed on the other side of the shower. The front of the shower is a mirror so that makes the picture confusing but this room is tiny with a glass shower right in the middle of the room. Luckily the glass wall of the shower has a curtain you can pull shut but the door doesn’t. Oh, the other weird thing, the bathroom and the shower share the same door. You open the shower door and it becomes the bathroom door. I guess two people can’t shower and poop at the same time. The room is clean and it has a nice big queen bed so that is all I need. The room has WiFi but I don’t have a strong enough signal in this room to access the Internet. I wrote this blog offline but now I have to figure out how to upload it. I’m so excited; tomorrow I get to go home. Hallelujah.