THE Great Wall - 11 April 2009
We started the day with a great breakfast. Very decent buffet selection and lots for Westerners, incl. croissants! Ricky, our guide, picked us up at 10.30am and it took us about 1h45 to get there. The road leading to the Great Wall was very boring, and even more so as it was so misty, you couldn't really see much. It certainly didn't look promising...
In fact, when we eventually got to the bottom of the wall, and looked up, you could barely see it... Nathalie was so crushed. This is something we had NOT banked on. We took a cable car to the top of gate 18, so that we could actually be ON the wall and see it up-close-and-personal but you just couldn't gage how endless it was as you could just about see from one tower to the next (and they are about 100 meters apart, if that). What was particularly frustrating is that all the neighbouring hills were full of trees covered in white blossom and if it had been a perfectly blue sky, it could have looked truly amazing. And there was nothing we could do... the fog / mist, whatever it was, never cleared for one minute. So we didn't spend too long on it. We just walked up to 3 towers, took quite a few photos and got back down to browse through the souvenir stalls. The craft on display was very pretty, but we got harrassed so badly, that we ended up hurrying back as you felt terribly guilty that you couldn't spare $1 to help everybody. Some of the items were incredibly cheap and remarkable value for money, it has to be said, but it was more a case of 'do I really need this? what would I do with it? and WHERE would I put it???'. Nathalie and I both have hardly any furniture at all, and almost no shelves, making it impossible to collect any souvenirs really. But try and explain that to them all...
We did find out some fascinating facts about the wall though. Namely that it took 2,000 years to complete and that it is a staggering 7,300kms long !!! (that's about 5,000 miles or so). Obviously, as it's impossible for the Chinese government to maintain the structure over 5,000 miles, most of it has crumbled down by now, some sections are entirely covered in grass now but the bit that are well maintained are quite impressive - fairly steep and with many small wide steps. It's also packed with H&S hazards with some drops not protected by railings in some areas, etc. making it a death trap for anyone with a visual impairment in my humble professional opinion.
We did see a litter of gorgeous ginger angorra kittens (and they even looked Chinese as their eyes were almond like, I swear !) and Nathalie spent a while cuddling them but they looked really lean (though real cute) and children passing by had a tendency to want to throw stones at him. In fact, a little kitten even took cover under Nathalie's legs for protection, as she squatted down to stroke it. It was quite heart breaking ...
We then had lunch and were taken to an enamel factory. An art that was inspired by the French we were told but perfected by the Chinese. I worried it'd be yet another tourist trap but it was actually quite interesting. I'd never realised how many steps were involved in making an emanel vase and how incredibly difficult it was. The vases are all made of copper so that they don't break and the gold drawings are not just painted on, as I had wrongly assumed, but are actually very thin threads, about 2mm high, painstakingly glued on by some expert hand so that the drawing can actually been 'felt' with fingers, not just seen. Good hand and eye coordination are crucial to be able to do the job at all. Then each section was filled with respective colours (up to 30 to choose from) to make the designs. 8 coats of paint then need to be applied, no less, so that the colours can withstand the tremendous heat that the vase will need to 'endure' in an oven. After that, it is polished with stones to make its exterior perfectly smooth. To see these women pick up the copper threads with twizers was quite an art in itself. The threads were pre-cut into tiny pieces and twisted in all sorts of ways to match all sorts of shapes that had been previously drawn on the copper. You had to see it to believe it. In fact, Nathalie was in such awe and found the process so amazing that she bought a vase as a momento. It took us ages to decide on which one as they were all absolutely gorgeous and had very different designs on (though the most popular in China were a phoenix and a dragon, representing the empress and the emperor, symbol of family). Each colour had a meaning too ('green' means 'peace', etc). She settled for one with a red dominant colour and a beautiful blue bird with a long tail.
They all had a seal underneath stating it had been drawn by a master and a guarantee that the vases will never break.
We then had to go back to the airport, drive a further 1h30 and check-in for our flight to Kunming. It was an hour late and the flight was 3H10 long meaning we would not be able to check-in at 10.30pm. Phew. Thankfully, our luggage arrived promptly and our guide was there, waiting for us. She was called Murphy and was very sweet. She told us all about the town and how it had 'exploded' as of 1999 when they had the horticultural world expo, with 98 countries represented. Kunming is known for its amazing flowers and they are sold by the kilo here as they have so many ! The city is expanding very rapidly and was full of tower blocks - but rather nice ones. It had lots of neon lights everywhere too, making it more like the Las Vegas of China (well, not quite as OTT). The air was also very clear (one of the purest 'city air' in China) and I had gathered that even before we landed as I could see the street lights from the plane -- good sign.
We couldn't wait to get to check in to feel the mattress on the bed, praying it'd be a bit / a lot softer, but, unfortunately, it was just like a board all over again. Nathalie sighed 'if a 4* hotel cannot have decent beds, I think we've had it, we're just not going to get a good night's sleep here at all'. We ordered another 2 quilts, that she kept, and we folded them in 4 so that it'd feel like 8... and she slept on that and it helped (as in: 'how to make the best of a bad job') and I basically pulled the armchair, the foot rest and another chair, lined them up in a row and slept on that !!! It was fairly comfortable actually and I just told myself 'pretend you are sleeping in business class. You are horizontal but cannot afford to move much'... It worked. I didn't fall off anyway. And with 2 sleeping pills, I even managed to sleep 7H...
The next day we had planned to see the Stone Forest, so we desperately needed blue skies !
We started the day with a great breakfast. Very decent buffet selection and lots for Westerners, incl. croissants! Ricky, our guide, picked us up at 10.30am and it took us about 1h45 to get there. The road leading to the Great Wall was very boring, and even more so as it was so misty, you couldn't really see much. It certainly didn't look promising...
In fact, when we eventually got to the bottom of the wall, and looked up, you could barely see it... Nathalie was so crushed. This is something we had NOT banked on. We took a cable car to the top of gate 18, so that we could actually be ON the wall and see it up-close-and-personal but you just couldn't gage how endless it was as you could just about see from one tower to the next (and they are about 100 meters apart, if that). What was particularly frustrating is that all the neighbouring hills were full of trees covered in white blossom and if it had been a perfectly blue sky, it could have looked truly amazing. And there was nothing we could do... the fog / mist, whatever it was, never cleared for one minute. So we didn't spend too long on it. We just walked up to 3 towers, took quite a few photos and got back down to browse through the souvenir stalls. The craft on display was very pretty, but we got harrassed so badly, that we ended up hurrying back as you felt terribly guilty that you couldn't spare $1 to help everybody. Some of the items were incredibly cheap and remarkable value for money, it has to be said, but it was more a case of 'do I really need this? what would I do with it? and WHERE would I put it???'. Nathalie and I both have hardly any furniture at all, and almost no shelves, making it impossible to collect any souvenirs really. But try and explain that to them all...
We did find out some fascinating facts about the wall though. Namely that it took 2,000 years to complete and that it is a staggering 7,300kms long !!! (that's about 5,000 miles or so). Obviously, as it's impossible for the Chinese government to maintain the structure over 5,000 miles, most of it has crumbled down by now, some sections are entirely covered in grass now but the bit that are well maintained are quite impressive - fairly steep and with many small wide steps. It's also packed with H&S hazards with some drops not protected by railings in some areas, etc. making it a death trap for anyone with a visual impairment in my humble professional opinion.
We did see a litter of gorgeous ginger angorra kittens (and they even looked Chinese as their eyes were almond like, I swear !) and Nathalie spent a while cuddling them but they looked really lean (though real cute) and children passing by had a tendency to want to throw stones at him. In fact, a little kitten even took cover under Nathalie's legs for protection, as she squatted down to stroke it. It was quite heart breaking ...
We then had lunch and were taken to an enamel factory. An art that was inspired by the French we were told but perfected by the Chinese. I worried it'd be yet another tourist trap but it was actually quite interesting. I'd never realised how many steps were involved in making an emanel vase and how incredibly difficult it was. The vases are all made of copper so that they don't break and the gold drawings are not just painted on, as I had wrongly assumed, but are actually very thin threads, about 2mm high, painstakingly glued on by some expert hand so that the drawing can actually been 'felt' with fingers, not just seen. Good hand and eye coordination are crucial to be able to do the job at all. Then each section was filled with respective colours (up to 30 to choose from) to make the designs. 8 coats of paint then need to be applied, no less, so that the colours can withstand the tremendous heat that the vase will need to 'endure' in an oven. After that, it is polished with stones to make its exterior perfectly smooth. To see these women pick up the copper threads with twizers was quite an art in itself. The threads were pre-cut into tiny pieces and twisted in all sorts of ways to match all sorts of shapes that had been previously drawn on the copper. You had to see it to believe it. In fact, Nathalie was in such awe and found the process so amazing that she bought a vase as a momento. It took us ages to decide on which one as they were all absolutely gorgeous and had very different designs on (though the most popular in China were a phoenix and a dragon, representing the empress and the emperor, symbol of family). Each colour had a meaning too ('green' means 'peace', etc). She settled for one with a red dominant colour and a beautiful blue bird with a long tail.
They all had a seal underneath stating it had been drawn by a master and a guarantee that the vases will never break.
We then had to go back to the airport, drive a further 1h30 and check-in for our flight to Kunming. It was an hour late and the flight was 3H10 long meaning we would not be able to check-in at 10.30pm. Phew. Thankfully, our luggage arrived promptly and our guide was there, waiting for us. She was called Murphy and was very sweet. She told us all about the town and how it had 'exploded' as of 1999 when they had the horticultural world expo, with 98 countries represented. Kunming is known for its amazing flowers and they are sold by the kilo here as they have so many ! The city is expanding very rapidly and was full of tower blocks - but rather nice ones. It had lots of neon lights everywhere too, making it more like the Las Vegas of China (well, not quite as OTT). The air was also very clear (one of the purest 'city air' in China) and I had gathered that even before we landed as I could see the street lights from the plane -- good sign.
We couldn't wait to get to check in to feel the mattress on the bed, praying it'd be a bit / a lot softer, but, unfortunately, it was just like a board all over again. Nathalie sighed 'if a 4* hotel cannot have decent beds, I think we've had it, we're just not going to get a good night's sleep here at all'. We ordered another 2 quilts, that she kept, and we folded them in 4 so that it'd feel like 8... and she slept on that and it helped (as in: 'how to make the best of a bad job') and I basically pulled the armchair, the foot rest and another chair, lined them up in a row and slept on that !!! It was fairly comfortable actually and I just told myself 'pretend you are sleeping in business class. You are horizontal but cannot afford to move much'... It worked. I didn't fall off anyway. And with 2 sleeping pills, I even managed to sleep 7H...
The next day we had planned to see the Stone Forest, so we desperately needed blue skies !
posted by Sylvie at 12:58 PM
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