Great Wall and Great Opera

Today we got the royal tour of the Great Wall. We organized to have a private driver (well at least private after sharing it with an elder french couple but at least it wasn't in a big tour bus!). We went to the Mutianyu section of the great wall that is well preserved and absolutely amazing. Driving out of Beijing it was a relief to get away from the smog and up into the countryside. It was also fortunate because the day before it rained and this morning was clear with light sparce clouds spaced across the sky. The flat beijing made way to the sharp hills and high peaks on which the Great Wall perched.

We took the gondola up to the top and walked around for hours. We would walk along the wall admiring the views and masonry of the grand stucture. And as it would get hotter in the day, we spent more and more time in the cool watchtowers that were 100 meters or so apart from eachother. It was an amazing sight and we tried to take as many pictures as possible to capture it. There was even one watchtower high in the hills that I hiked to that had an unrestored original section, one in which instead of a pathway on top with neatly layed bricks there were trees and bushes overgrowing the walkway. It even had remnants of an all but forgotten watchtower that was slowly crumbling to its death by erosion.

When we returned from the Great Wall we ate dinner at the Hostel restaraunt next door and then went to see the famous Beijing Opera at an authentic opera house within walking distance. I must say that watching a Chinese Opera may be somthign I am only prepared to do once. Although they were beautifully and ornately dressed with their faces painted with great detail, the plot was incredibly hard to follow (even with a screen giving the subtitles in english). Moreover the voices of the women were so shrill and high pitched it was painful at times.