Beijing

We will visit the Ming Tombs today and take a hike on a wild section of the Great Wall.

The Ming Tombs lie 50 km north-west of Beijing. 13 of the 16 Ming emperors are buried at this impressive site. The second-largest tomb Ding Ling - the tomb of Emperor Wan Li (1573 - 1620) - was the first to be excavated. Two others - the largest tomb Chang Ling and Zhao Ling - are now open to the public. It took the emperor six years, hundreds of thousands of workers and a big amount of money to build his necropolis. Nowadays, travelers can visit the underground passageways and caverns.

Construction on the biggest tomb Chang Ling - the resting place of Emperor Zhu Di (also known as Yongle, 1402-1424) - started in 1409 and took 18 years to complete. According to legends, 16 concubines were buried alive with Zhu Di's corpse.

Zhao Ling - the resting place of Emperor Longqing and three of his wives - is the 9th of the Ming Tombs.

The seven km road known as the Spirit Way "Shen Dao" starts with a triumphal arch, then goes through the Great Palace Gate, where officials had to dismount, and passes a giant tortoise (made in 1425) bearing the largest stele in China. This is followed by a guard of 12 sets of stone animals. Beyond the stone animals are 12 human statues of officials, ministers and generals. The stone figures terminate at the Lingxing Gate.
After the visit of the tombs, we head to a lovely countryside restaurant where an excellent trout meal awaits you. After lunch we head to a wild section of the Great Wall. We hike for about an hour on the unspoilt and overgrown Great Wall at Huanghua.

The Great Wall stretches from Shanhai Pass on the east coast to Jiayu Pass in the Gobi desert - an important link on the Silk Road. The "original" wall was begun 2000 years ago during the Qin dynasty (221-207), when China was unified under Emperor Qin Shihuang. Separate walls, built by independent kingdoms to keep out "barbarians" and nomads, were linked up. The construction required hundreds of thousands of workers and according to legends, one of the building materials apart from the estimated 180 million cubic meters of rammed earth was the bodies of deceased workers. The wall actually never performed its function as a defense line. However, it worked very well as a kind of highway, along which men and equipment could be transported across mountainous terrain. Its beacon tower system using smoke signals transmitted news of enemy movements quickly back to the capital.

Please note that good shoes (hiking boots) are required and people suffering from vertigo should not join. We could also take you to one of the less demanding, but much touristier sections of the Great Wall.