The Great Wall March 17th

Wednesday morning we arrived at the port of Xingang, which is the main port city for Beijing. The port is enormous and very busy, with loading docks and cranes for as far as you can see. Chinese immigration and customs took much longer than any of us expected, so we were about one hour late debarking for our scheduled tour to the Great Wall. Fortunately, it seems the rain has left us, and the weather was clear, but still fairly cold.

Once off the ship at about 9:30, we boarded our bus for the 2.5 hour drive to the Great Wall, which lies about 215KM to the North of Xingang. We would not see anything of Beijing, since it lies to the East of Xingang. Even though we were aware that China was in the midst of a building boom, we were totally unprepared for what we saw on our drive. New high rises are going up everywhere. In Xingang, they are building a totally new city skyline near the port, complete with high rise office buildings, commercial, and huge apartment complexes, as well as a waterway and park area. Construction cranes are everywhere.

The auto traffic is unbelievable. Lanes mean nothing. It’s a total free for all, with cars and trucks squeezing three lanes into two, and four into three. Absolutely the most fearless and aggressive drivers we’ve ever seen, including Viet Nam.

We did arrive safely at the Great Wall, and the site is truely worth the long and sometimes heart stopping drive. From our vantage point we were only able to view an extremely small portion of the 3,000KM structure, but it is an amazing sight to see. Fortunately for us the weather was beautiful, making the experience all the more breathtaking. We climbed the steep stairs and ramps along the wall for about three sections, continuing to rise up the mountain side. By the time we reached the third level, we were wishing we were twenty years younger, and had more time to explore even further. Definitely a site to put on your “bucket list”. Now it’s on to Dalian.