8th May – Beijing Great Wall & Ming Tombs

Today we have about a 2 hour drive to the Mutianyu Great Wall so we all sit back & relax & catch up on some sleep on the bus.

As soon as we walk into the area where we buy our tickets we come across a group of Caulfield Grammar School students from Melbourne.  As both Sean & Brett stayed at the Nanjing campus in their 9th year at school it was great to chat to these students.

We catch a cable car up to the wall which has been built along the ridges of the mountains.  It is certainly a beautiful part of the country with mountains all around us. Mutianyu Great Wall is located in Huairou District of Beijing and was built on the remains of the Great Wall from Northern Qi in the beginning of the Ming Dynasty.  This section of the wall has been restored and is in excellent condition.

We are very lucky as there aren’t that many people on this section of the wall today apart from us and the CGS students & one of their teachers who we meet up with again.

We spend a couple of hours walking along the wall & climbing through several of the watch towers.

After we have some dumplings for lunch we visit 2 of the Ming Tombs, Changling & Dingling.

We go to see a Chinese opera tonight with Peter & Paula, which was very interesting, fortunately it had English subtitles to tell us the story line & it only went for 1 hour.