Bob and Ann in Elder Hostel China Odyssey 2004

Bob on the Great Wall

A 1 1/2 hour bus ride to the Great Wall. A chilly, windy day for our hour walk up the steep side to a high signal beacon, but we all bundled up again. The view was spectacular, however somewhat obscured by smog/haze and sand, still worth the climb. The walk back down seemed steeper than going up, but ended at the Great Wall Hotel where we had some food, but better than last night and the beer really tasted good.

Cloisonne Showroom

On the way back to Beijing, we stopped at a cloisonne’ factory for a great demonstration of the craft and an opportunity to buy at the huge showroom. We bought a box of 10 bells for gifts and Christmas and a bracelet for Ann.

Summer Palace


Summer Palace

The next stop was the Summer Palace of the Chin Dynasty, rebuilt by CiCI the much reviled dowager empress who has been blamed for the decline 19th c. China and the fall of the Chin Dynasty. It is a lovely, large wooded retreat including huge man made lake and mountain and many ornate wooden buildings. Burned to the ground by the British and French in the mid 1850’s, the peaceful buildings and landscape was somewhat marred for us by large numbers of tourists. Worse though, were hawkers who had met us going in and then appeared at the opposite end of the complex an hour and a half later. We ran that gauntlet to get the 1/4 mile to the bus and at moments felt beseiged by devils! Since we had been warned that some hawkers worked as pickpockets, our escape down the narrow road was even more nerve wracking. Aside: in our group of 21 at least two use canes, three are very short (under 5’) and mostly out of shape so quite vulnerable. We range from a 50+ years to late 70’s and the group as a whole moves very slowly to accomodate those who need to stop and rest, so when were accosted on the way out of the gate by the aggressive vendors, we lost our senses of humor. Fortunately Yang treated the episode lightly and we regained our spirits.

Back to the Huadu by 5:30 and anticipating our Peking Duck Welcome Banquet tonight. Our dinner was preceded by an event more memorable than the meal. Getting into the restaurant parking lot our bus was blocked by an empty car parked in the drive-through. Cars honking horns piled up behind the bus blocking us behind and it looked to develop into a nasty traffic jam when half a dozen uniformed security guards appeared, surrounded the VW Passat blocking us and began rocking it to physically push it aside. Suddenly another dozen similarly adorned guards also appeared and altogether they surrounded the car, picked it up and dropped it next to a wall, unplugging the pass thru! We had already piled off the bus to walk around to the Restaurant so we continued walking while our bus driver moved the bus to a parking place and we all marveled at the spirit of cooperation demonstrated by the Chinese.

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