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THE day

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Today was the day. THE day. The entire trip culminated to this. Mostly because none of us know much about China except this, but whatever. Today we went to the Great Wall. It was every bit as impressive as we had imagined. A two hour drive brought us to the outskirts of Beijing. Beijing is BIG. As our guide put it: "You could drive 5 hours from the center of Beijing and still be in Beijing." So though we were still in Beijing, the city eventually gave way to rural mountains, where we pulled into the visiting site of the Great Wall.

The Great Wall was initially very separate walls, built by various warring factions in China. During the Qin Dynasty, the first emperor of unified China, Qin Shihuan, ordered the disparate sections connected to create one giant wall. Later dynasties continued construction of the wall until they got what we saw today. Only some sections of the great wall are accessible by tourists. We visited the Mutianyu section. This section was built by the Ming Dynasty.

After walking through a narrow passage lined with tourist shops (of course) we got to a chairlift which took us up to the top of the wall. You could walk up too, but who wants to do that? Once up there, the views were breathtaking. Wall extended in both directions, following along the ridgeline of the mountains as far as the eye could see. We decided to head to the right, and hiked for about 2 miles up and down the wall. When we crested a hill, there would be a guard tower. From there, you could see along to the next tower and beyond.

We got to the end of this section, noted by a sign we were not supposed to pass. We passed anyway, and walked along the wall which was in much worse shape...yet still the wall. The views here were even more spectacular than the first, so it was totally worth it.

All in all, a humbling experience. But for even more fun, we got to ride an alpine slide back down to the parking area!
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