We met our group at 8am and boarded our bus for our day of activities. Our pedicab ride this morning was both pretty and gritty! The part around the lake with the lotus flowers was pretty then it reminded me of Naples or Al Kohbar.
I really enjoyed our art class that was next. We went to a local’s Hutong home. We started off with knot tying which was the hardest. Then we did some calligraphy. In the pictures our name is the 3rd row. My name is conqueror exquisite raw silk and Coral is silk. In the paper cutting we made the double happiness symbol.
Fun fact: we drove by the Bird’s Nest Stadium on the way to the Wall. On the opening day of the Olympics it was going to rain during the opening ceremony so the Chinese government shot missiles into the sky above the stadium with a special chemical to dissipate the rain clouds so that it wouldn’t rain in the opening ceremony.
You can’t own land here. You can own your house but you can only lease the land that your house is on for 70 years.
There are cameras everywhere with facial recognition software (they took our picture
and fingerprints in the airport), so there is little privacy but also no crime. It is an
interesting trade off. The people here seem to really trust their government even though they don’t get to vote for their leaders.
The Great Wall was AMAZING! I travel for architecture, so the Wall is why I wanted to do this trip, and it was so much more than I imagined. It stirred my soul! They say it is like the spine of a dragon following the highest ridges of the mountain range. As I got to the top there was a new top beckoning me further. I wanted to just keep going! It was truly amazing. I just loved it and I’m so glad I got to experience it.
We got back to the hotel at and walked down the street to the McDonalds for a quick dinner and called it a day. We had to have our bags out by 10:30. Tomorrow’s departure time is 5:30am.
Total Fitbit steps for the day: 14,865
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