Badaling, bad-a-bing
(The Badaling section of the Great Wall: China)
I felt so relaxed today as it’s the first time I haven’t had to use the full extent of my Chinese and I didn’t have to have any knowledge tucked away ready for immediate use. The day and its meanderings were out of my hands and in the hands of ‘Lisa’, our tour guide for the day from Emperor Chang Ling’s tomb to the Great Wall of China. We didn’t have a perfect day, or a perfect photographer – in this shot I am running up the stairs to rescue my mother from overexposure of my photographs, but also her overexposure to my various complex camera functions. I didn’t just walk on the wall – documentary footage speaks for itself – I ran.
There is something very familiar about the wall, and rather comforting. It actually reminded me of the Roman wall near my hometown, Carlisle, but obviously on a much larger and more dramatic scale. The wall must be even more incredible on a sunnier day, or just at dawn. We were not blessed with fantastic light opportunities, but it was a dazzling experience nonetheless. The thing that possibly surprised me most was what surrounded the wall; shacks of t shirts, but no actual shops or permanent buildings, there was a fair bit of litter scattered about (which was a little disappointing) but even more bizarre, though there must be thousands of people there each day, there were only four working cubicles in the toilets. The tap didn’t even have water. I dropped my (absolutely essential) packet of tissues on the floor and emitted a loud expletive. I peeled the plastic wrapper from the sticky wet floor and quickly pulled the remaining tissues into my bag before a drip could fall from the then filthy packet. It was a very odd encounter after the splendor of the UNESCO World Heritage site above us.
Tomorrow we plan to take the subway to the Summer Palace on the other side of Beijing, it will no doubt take up the entire day, though I hope we have by now exhausted the need to get up so early in the morning, my inability to sleep enough has reached fever pitch and I’m ready to return to quiet little Suzhou* very soon.
*By ‘quiet little Suzhou’, I mean to illustrate that the population of Suzhou is 7 million and the population of Beijing is 18 million.
Population of Suzhou is 8 million.
Well, I did check online as nowhere says 8 million – I thought that might just be hearsay… OK, 8 million it is.
such a fashionable great wall photo! love it.