Chinese Administrator Exchange-Day Six

These photos include our visit to the Great Wall of China which was originally 10,000km but is now only 6,000km long.  The wall was built by prisoners and young boys from the provinces along the path of the wall.  If you were a worker and died while working on the wall, your remains became a part of the wall.  I took a gondola up to the top of the wall rather than walking up the stairs.  The view from the top is incredible.  We hiked through five or six towers which are very steep with many steps.  We tried to imagine how hard life must have been for the men building the wall and the soldiers assigned to walk on the wall.  Winters in China are very cold and the wall is built along the highest points so staying alive in such conditions would be difficult at best.  The building of the Great Wall was the idea of the emperor during the Qin Dynasty (221 BC-207 BC) so the wall is thousands of years old.

After leaving the Great Wall we traveled back into Beijing to take a quick picture stop near the Olympic village where we viewed the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube before traveling on to the oldest hutong in Beijing.  We rode on bicycle rickshaws through the hutong neighborhoods.  Hutongs, which originated during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368 AD) are a series of living quarters constructed with small alleys.  Many hutongs have been demolished through the years to make way for new construction and roads but there are a few left in Beijing.  In preparation for the 2008 Olympics, the govt. had the oldest hutong made over as a tourist area with living quarters rented out to Olympic visitors.  There are about 100 hutongs left after the demolition of these neighborhoods leading up to the Olympics.  Individual quarters have rooms built on all four sides in a square shape with a courtyard in the middle.  In keeping with feng shui (art of balance of energies), the north room is the best room and is used by the elders of the family.  The south room would be used for the servants, storage or guests.  The east rooms were for the boys and the west rooms for the girls.  Young people in China do not like living in a hutong because there is no parking for cars and no toilets (must use a public toilet).  During the Olympics, the hutongs rented for 3,500 yuan per night (which is about $560 based on today's value).  Now hutongs are rented out like a bed and breakfast and cost about 240 yuan per night (about $38). 

Following another large dinner (I am getting pretty good with chopsticks) we walked to the downtown shopping district of Beijing which is Wangfujing Street.  This area is closed off to cars which makes it easy to walk to both sides of the street.  Tonight a fellow superintendent (Joe Stutting) and I decided that we would try the fried scorpion on a stick.  As you will see in the pictures, the scorpions are live on the stick and then quickly cooked on a hot grill and seasoned.  While very crunchy, it is much like eating the crispy skin of a cooked turkey except with the spiky legs and tail.  I can now say that I have eaten scorpion and goat brains!  I followed that crispy snack with a Chinese ice cream treat.