{"id":1776,"date":"2010-05-26T21:03:27","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T20:03:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2023-09-05T21:47:06","modified_gmt":"2023-09-05T20:47:06","slug":"bejing_day_4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/2010\/05\/26\/bejing_day_4\/","title":{"rendered":"Beijing, day 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nDay 4: cloisonné showroom; Great Wall; Sacred Way; market; duck.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe main activity for day 4 was seeing and climbing the Great Wall. It takes about an hour and a half to drive to the section we were going to visit, so we stopped on the way to visit a cloisonné<\/a> showroom<\/b>. We first saw the (very fiddly) process of producing a cloisonné object. A lot of work goes into them! Draw the pattern, glue the copper strips, paint all the little spaces between them (using an eyedropper), fire the object, repeat 4 more times, and polish.\n<\/p>\n

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\nThe showroom had everything from huge cloisonné urns for 490,000 yuan to cheap knick-knacks for 50. (They had lots of cheap Christmas tree ornaments for some reason, and I mean LOTS, probably as many as the more traditional, and more Chinese, vases.) The larger items were also of higher quality, so price generally went up faster than size. Everything above ca 500 yuan was really pretty: I found the whole cloisonné concept (and realization) very appealing. They are durable and solid, and yet elegant, lustrous and colourful.\n<\/p>\n

\nThen, the Great Wall of China<\/a><\/b>, which we visited at Badaling<\/a>, the first section of the Wall to be opened for visitors, and a very popular spot. A bit crowded, as all sites, but really not too bad. (Enough people so you can’t take a photo without getting a number of strangers in your picture, but not so you that it would be difficult to walk or that can’t get a view at all.)\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Badaling section of the Wall is in a very nice setting, with steep, rocky, verdant hills all around. Even if the Wall itself had been dull, a walk in that beautiful landscape would have been a treat. The Wall snakes goes up and down along the hills, with towers on top of some of them.\n<\/p>\n

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\nUpon arriving, we were offered a choice by our guide: turn right for an easy walk, or turn left for a steep and dangerous section of the wall. We assumed that the “danger” was relative to the average tourist (which in China often means retired people) and chose to turn left. Our choice was quickly proven right: the going was somewhat steep in places, with slopes and stairs, but really nothing very taxing or perilous. The surface of the Wall was in good repair, and there were walls (at least waist-high) and handrails on both sides. So we had a very pleasant walk, uneven and varied enough to make it easy for the legs even when steep. I would happily have walked there far longer than the hour and a half we got.\n<\/p>\n

\nI had expected Ingrid to complain about all the walking but she marched like a champion. Litle miss “my legs are tired” took the stairs two at a time. We walked mostly uphill to a suitable tower, where we had a snack (Ingrid devoured all our dried apricots, and all of Grandma’s raisins and nuts). It seems that many visitors had found that tower a suitable turning point: beyond it, the Wall was much emptier. On our way back the downhill slopes and stairs seemed to scare her a bit so I carried her on my shoulders for a while, but then she hopped and skipped onwards with great vigour.\n<\/p>\n

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\nOn our way back to Beijing, we stopped to walk a part of the Sacred Way<\/b> leading to the Ming tombs<\/a>, Ming dynasty emperors’ graves. This was basically a long straight road with an occasional ceremonial gate, and then a section flanked by statues of animals and people to guard the graves: lions, horses, elephants, unicorns generals and officials, etc. (Interestingly, most of the animal statues were in a realistic style, while others were more symbolic. The elephant looked like a real elephant, and so did the camel; the unicorn was a symbolic mythical creature – and so was the lion. This must have been a conscious choice; I’m sure they had seen actual lions but chose to depict a heraldic\/imperial\/mythical lion instead.) Halfway along the road we were caught in a thunderstorm, which we waited out under the eaves of a souvenir shop. It passed quickly, after scaring away most of the people, and leaving us with clean, fresh, but wet views.\n<\/p>\n

\nBack in Beijing we were taken to yet another market, with more cheap clothes, electronics, jewellery, shoes, bags etc. I’m sure you can get a bargain at these places if you’re determined, but my philosophy of shopping is to go for quality rather than quantity, so this was not of much interest.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn the evening, the meat-eaters had Beijing duck<\/a> for dinner. Their unanimous verdict was that the duck was a disappointment: it didn’t taste much at all. And apparently it’s supposed to be that way. All this roasting, carving and rolling is much ado about nothing. But the restaurant itself was nice: although we didn’t eat the duck we got better food than usual.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Day 4: cloisonné showroom; Great Wall; Sacred Way; market; duck. The main activity for day 4 was seeing and climbing the Great Wall. It takes about an hour and a half to drive to the section we were going to visit, so we stopped on the way to visit a cloisonné showroom. We first saw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[507,431,510,367,506,25,505,509,511,66,508,137],"class_list":["post-1776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travels","tag-badaling","tag-beijing","tag-beijing_duck","tag-china","tag-cloisonne","tag-food","tag-great_wall","tag-ming_tombs","tag-mountains","tag-photo","tag-sacred_way","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17808,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions\/17808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}