The picture on the left may look like a grand entrance to the Great Wall, but it is not. This is the main gate leading to the vast area of the Ming Tombs. When we arrived at the hotel on Sunday, Ben helped us book a tour through the hotel for a visit to the Great Wall on Tuesday. Our guide book warned that many tours to the Great Wall include a stop at the Ming Tombs as well as a few other stops. However, the Ming Tombs is in the "top 10" and we figured a stop at a jade factory could not be any worse than the shopping stops we had in Italy, so we made the reservation.

The Ming Tombs is the burial grounds for most of the Ming-dynasty emperors. There were several buildings similar to what we saw at the Forbidden City. The main building has an intricate ceiling supported by many thick columns. Inside is a statue of an emperor and many people had left money at its feet. This was common for many of the statues we saw, especially those of Buddha.

Overall, Dan and I were both disappointed by the Ming Tombs. After walking through the main building and seeing the meager collection of royal items (most were now in other museums or stolen), we climbed the Spirit Tower and were told that the big dirt hill covered in trees was a major tomb never to be excavated. From the front of the tower we had a nice view and could see a few other tombs in the distance that we did not have time to visit. Anticlimactic is probably our best word for describing this site.

Our tour group for the day was relatively small. Among the 17 people there were folks from Australia, Wales, Scotland, Iran, India, and Columbia. Dan and I were the only ones from the United States. Before our advertised stop at the jade factory, we took an unexpected break at an herbal medicine center. This was an odd place. Upon arrival, they marched us through a maze of hallways and put us in this room set up like a tiny classroom. We were then greeted by a young woman in a long lab coat who described the ways traditional Chinese doctors diagnose patients simply by looking at their skin complexion, the color of their tongue, and feeling their pulse. Then the young woman introduced the "very special doctors" who entered the room dramatically. These doctors sought volunteers to diagnose. Dan, of course, was intrigued. After a cursory look, the doctor told him a few obvious things that he already knew. I, of course, was looking for the catch. They presented Dan with a list of herbal medicines and asked if he was interested in using them (i.e., buying them) to treat any of his "conditions." Nope. We were all escorted out and Dan and I slipped away from the group for a quick moment to snap a few pictures in this beautiful inner courtyard.

The next stop was at the jade factory and our experience there was predictable. Lunch was served here as well. Many mild Chinese dishes passed around without description. Finally, we were headed to our main destination: The Great Wall of China.

As we first saw the Great Wall out of the bus window, Dan and I each took several pictures. All of them did not compare to what we eventually were able to view. Before we actually set foot on the wall, we rode to a higher point in the hills in small mechanized tram cars that they dubbed "the pulley." The pulley took us to a small station at the fourth gate of the Great Wall. Each tower is referred to as a gate. Our goal was to climb to the highest point in the vicinity: Gate 8.

It was very windy on the wall, but not very cold. Certainly not like how I remember the experience with my family in December 1984. There were hordes of people climbing the wall, running down the steps, squeezing into the outlook posts within the gates, and, of course, taking photographs. I am quite curious to know how many times Dan and I appear in other people's pictures from this day, or even the whole trip.

We took many pictures along our climb, but most of them were of the same section of the wall from different angles that changed slightly as we changed elevation. The photo on the home page is of us near Gate 8 with the broken section beneath Gate 7 behind us. (There was a bypass at Gate 6 to skip that part.) The crowd of tourists was most dense at the top of the hill, but we were able to reach the final gate.

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