8 January 2008: Chris's Birthday at The Great Wall Of China

We awoke this morning, excited about the prospect of our first day in China. We had arrived very late at night, and had gone straight to bed.
We decided to eat breakfast in the hotel's dining room, so that we would not have to brave the cold weather outside in search of breakfast food. The hotel's breakfast was very good, but clearly had been made for westerners.
Chris had organized a group tour of the Ming Tombs and The Great Wall of China before we left Melbourne, so we had to get ourselves down to the hotel lobby by 8am for the tour bus. Our tour was only small, with 7 in total. Another Australian couple were on the tour! (Tasmanians, but we will forgive them for that...)
The tour bus stopped at several "Government Friendship" stores along the way, where they offered "reasonable price, no argue". I'm sure it won't be the last time I will chuckle about English translations over here.
The first friendship store was selling Jade. Jade is a green stone that changes color as it ages. The Chinese think that Jade is a "living stone" because of this change in color. Many people buy Jade as jewelery, it is supposed to be a omen for good health.
The shop had a small display workshop where we were able to watch the jade being carved. Apparently, once you learn to carve jade, you are not allowed to work as anything else but a jade carver. There are no Tafe coursers or schools to learn this skill.  It is passed on from generation to generation, father to son...
The other "government friendship store" we stopped in specialised in copper vases. They too had a small workshop which we were able to walk through and watch the process of enameling the copper vases. This was fascinating. I never realized just how much work goes into even the most simple vases.
Starting from a base copper vase, a design of very fine copper ribbon is glued on to the surface. This copper ribbon forms little compartments in the design. These compartments are then filled with glaze and fired. It sometimes takes up to 7 or 8 layers of glaze and fire to achieve the correct finish. The piece is complete when the colored sections are flush with the copper ribbon. No wonder the price of copper is so expensive, its all being used to make vases in China.
The Ming Tombs is basically the burial ground for the Ming Dynasty emperors. 13 tombs are buried in various locations of the park, but many are not restored. The tomb we visited had been restored. There was a large courtyard, a temple for worship, and a monument (tombstone) to mark the location. There was a big hill behind this monument, which was the actual location of burial. One of the most notable things from this tomb was that in the temple / palace, all the pillars were made from cedar trees that were at least 1000 years old. It's amazing to think that there were once 13 temples / palaces, all with many cedar trees holding them up!
The highlight of the day was visiting The Great Wall of China! We visited the most restored part of the wall, at Badaling. They have a "chairlift" to help get up to the top of the mountain that the wall sits on. I think something must have been lost in translation with "chairlift", because it was more like a roller coaster!
The view from the top of the wall was beautiful, although street vendors shouting at you to buy their wares did tarnish the moment. Luckily, the day we visited it was sunny and there were clear skies. I took lots of photos. The mountains looked so majestic from the top of the wall, it's a pity that there were so many people clamoring to take photos and buy souvenirs. I can imagine how much I would hate it in the summertime!
As we made our way back to the tour bus, we passed some black bears. They had been caught and were kept in captivity for the tourists.
The bus ride returning to the hotel passed by the location of the Olympic Village. Chris and I tried to take photos of the huge apartment buildings from the side of the bus. Also, they have built a huge stadium and water-sports complex which is very impressive. This is also where Chris received a phone call, he seems to always be on his phone.  It was Ryan checking how we were doing in Beijing, they were traveling around Harbin, China, visiting the ice city and the -20C temperatures.  They were recommending a restaurant for dinner that night.  After Chris hung up the phone, one of the other passengers asked Chris if it was his birthday....  and I thought, crap!! I had remembered yesterday and with all that was going on today it had gone totally out of my mind.  Now I had make up for lost birthday for the rest of the afternoon/evening.  Chris being Chris had noticed that I had forgotten about it being his birthday and as he does did not say a word, and was just quietly waiting to see if he could get through the entire day without me realising. 
As we contuined driving around, I noticed that many buildings are under construction at the moment. Our tour guide assured me that this is normal, but I'm not so sure if it's because of the Olympics or not.
When we returned to the hotel, Chris and I set off on foot to explore the city a little more, and find the duck restaurant that Ryan and Brent recommended. We discovered a giant new shopping mall complex, and the night food-market. At the food market they sold weird foods on skewers, such as scorpion, sea-horse, snake, octopus, and silk worm. I was not brave enough to buy anything, but I did manage to see some people try eating centipede, and another eating the scorpion. I must admit that made my stomach flutter.
Chris and I ate in the much more plush "Quanjude Duck Restaurant". We ordered peiking duck, which is the local delicacy. Chris ordered some rice wine to accompany the duck.  The fun of ordering drinks in a foreign country is trying to work out exactly what they are selling you.  They did not serve Sparkling, so we thought we would be adventurous and go for the rice wine.  It's like a muscat, and you drink it in little glasses.  Most probably been better if we had some other people to share the bottle with, but we managed to get through it.