Thursday 31 May 2012

long long wall

2000 years ago, someone placed the first stone (Tea wanted to know which one, ideas anyone?) and today it is the largest man made structure in the world, longer than 8,000 km (though it is not one continuous single wall), two times the distance between New York and San Francisco.  Six Great Walls will stretch around the earth.  How mind boggling is that?

Being the enterprising people that they are, the Chinese have cable cars and ropeways (like a ski lift) taking you up to the wall from Mutianyu and a kind of a luge in a slide (called slideways), coming down.  The ride lasts at least 3 minutes, no helmet is offered and its right under the ropeways. 

We went up the wall three times – the first time by cable car, the second time we hiked up (we were strongly discouraged out of concern that the climb was too steep and difficult for children, but they didn’t know that the Fayet children started trekking in the Pyrenees in their diapers), the third time by the ropeways.  We descended in the slideways twice.  The girls screamed in exhilaration.  I bit my tongue.  Look at the photo of Tea after the ride.  She’s saying “Look at my hair mama.  It wouldn’t have been hair-raising if I had had a helmet on, would it?”














2 comments:

  1. Wow! Great, great, great walls experience! Amazing :)

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