Beijing, China: Famous Historical Sights

Beijing is full of historical sights, so it's almost impossible to see them all. We were able to see the most famous ones during our trip, including Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and the Summer Palace.

Tiananmen Square:

In front of the main gate of the Forbidden City is Tiananmen Square, which is on 109 acres and is the world's largest public square. Tiananmen Square was originally designed and built in 1651. The square is so large that it is able to accommodate 10,000,000 people at one time! Around the square are many important government buildings, some of which are still used today.

We met these Chinese girls in Tiananmen Square who asked to take a picture with us because they thought we were beautiful. How funny!

A view of the main part of the square from a distance.

The Great Hall of the People

The Forbidden City

This complex was home to 24 emperors during the Ming and Qing dynasties and is now a shrine to China's imperial past. Built from 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 7,800,000 square feet. The Forbidden City is the world's largest surviving palace complex. The Forbidden City was designed to be the centre of the ancient, walled city of Beijing.

The Forbidden City is surrounded by a 26 foot tall wall.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony
We walked around here for about 3 hours and didn't even see it all! We were really surprised how huge it was...it just seemed never ending.

The Imperial roof decoration on the the Hall of Supreme Harmony

The Palace of Heavenly Purity

A huge rock formation in the Imperial Gardens

At the back of the Forbidden City were the Imperial Gardens. This area had a variety of plants, trees, lakes with fish, and large rock formations.

A group of guards in the Forbidden City

The Temple of Heaven
Serving as the main temple for China's emperors, the Temple of Heaven is where ancient leaders went to make their offerings and give thanks.

This area was mainly a beautiful park with many families enjoying the warm weather. We took a break for a while and had some orange popsicles with vanilla ice cream inside!

The best part about Chinese parks are the local people that gather there. We sat for a while and listened to a group of men playing music with Chinese instruments. We love how the Chinese people always gather outside to play card games together, and to play instruments, sing and dance. We saw it every time we went to a park.

Here's a video:

A group of people were dancing to music here too! They have such an amazing culture.

The Summer Palace
We were contemplating visiting the Summer Palace because it was located on the outskirts of central Beijing. However, we read an article while eating breakfast on our last day which had interviews with people living in Beijing talking about their favorite place to go in the city. Well, the Summer Palace seemed to be the most well-liked place to visit. We read more about it and discovered that you can take a boat from a river close to our hostel to the Summer Palace!

The boat ride was relaxing and took about 45 minutes.

Us on the boat. :)

The boat dropped us off at Kunming Lake, which is located on the Summer Palace grounds. This place was gorgeous!

In the distance around the lake, we could see numerous Chinese pavilions and pagodas.

These trees covered a walkway around the lake and Chinese music played on loudspeakers.

This 17 arch bridge leads to a small island in the middle of the lake that's covered with trees and pavilions. We spent a while exploring around the island.

In the middle of the park, a huge screen was set-up with the Rockets game on watching Yao Ming, the 7'6" 310lb. basketball player from China play against the Lakers. We were pretty surprised to see this in the middle of the Summer Palace.

This is a view of the Tower of Buddhist Incense, which is the very center of the Summer Palace, and is known as one of the masterpieces of ancient Chinese architecture.

Frank climbing up to get to the tower, which is located at the top of a hill.

As we climbed more stairs to reach the tower, we could see pavilions scattered throughout the palace.

The Tower of Buddhist Incense

A view of the Summer Palace from the tower.

We could also see a view of the Beijing skyline from the tower.

Melissa in the Tower of Buddhist Incense wishing this vacation would never end.

A long corridor outside the tower.

The tower enshrines a Buddha made in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). The statue is called the Buddha with One Thousand Hands and Eyes. It is 16 feet tall and has twelve heads and twenty-four arms.

Beijing, China: Hiking the Great Wall

The highlight of our trip was doing a 10 kilometer hike on the Great Wall!

Here's a quick history of the Great Wall:
The Great Wall of China was built over 2,000 years ago, by the first emperor of China during the Qin Dynasty (221 B.C - 206 B.C.). After uniting China from seven Warring States, the emperor connected and extended four old fortification walls along the north of China that originated about 700 B.C. (over 2500 years ago). Armies were stationed along the wall as a first line of defense against the invading nomadic tribes north of China. The Great Wall is one of the largest building construction projects ever completed. It stretches across the mountains of northern China, winding north and northwest of Beijing. It is over 5,000 km long. Its thickness ranges from about 15 to 30 feet and is up to 25 feet tall. During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the Great Wall was enlarged to 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) and renovated over a 200 year period, with watch-towers and cannons added.

Our experience:
The day began by being picked up at our hostel at 6am and taking a 3 hour bus ride from Beijing. We hiked 10km from Jinshanling to the Simatai section. This section was built around 1570 during the Ming Dynasty. From Beijing, there are a few different Great Wall options. We took the most strenuous hike that was the farthest away from Beijing because it's supposed to be the most beautiful and the least crowded. Since this section of the wall is original, the rocks and watch-towers in a lot of places have crumbled to the ground and there are a lot of loose rocks. The hike took us a few hours, since it was up and down most of the time. The entire experience was incredible!!!!!

To get up to the wall, we took a cable car.
Here's a video we took at the beginning of the hike:



As soon as we arrived on the Great Wall, we were overwhelmed with how beautiful the scenery was. Mountains were everywhere and the wall seemed to go on forever.

For the first half of the hike, these two women from Mongolia joined us. They knew a little English and they told us that they were farmers who had walked an hour and a half through the mountains to get to the Great Wall. It was actually fun walking with them. They told us stories about their families and helped us get down really steep parts of the wall. Plus, they took lots of pictures of us! When we were about to cross over into the second section of the hike, we had to buy a ticket. It was at this point when they brought out their bags of souvenirs to sell us in order to support their family. We bought a few small, overpriced things, gave them a hug and continued the rest of our hike, as they began their long journey home.

Along the wall, we went through about 30 watch-towers. Some were in really good condition, like the one seen in this picture. In each tower, we usually saw a Chinese vendor with a backpack full of cold water, coke, and beer for sale.

Jinshanling Great Wall

The farther we walked, the more difficult it got. The rocks were really unstable to walk on and it was almost all uphill. It didn't seem to phase us, though. We were having the time of our lives!

To get to this tower, we had to climb 100 really steep steps.

Simatai Great Wall
Here's a video of us about half way through:

A steep climb inside one of the watch-towers.

The wall was in such bad condition here that we had to hike along the side of it for a while.

Frank's loving it!

Being able to see a less-visited part of the wall was an exciting experience. Some of it hasn't been touched in what seems like centuries. Some of the guardhouses had no roofs on them, and we took a moment to climb the ruins.

This watch-tower has definitely seen better days.

The Simatai section of the wall is known as the most beautiful section on the entire wall.

This was at the end of our 10 kilometer hike. The views continued to get more impressive the farther we walked. It was breathtaking!

Finishing the hike, we crossed a suspension bridge across a beautiful river.

We ended the hike with a buffet lunch and then a 3 hour bus ride back to Beijing. This was an unbelievable experience and definitely a dream come true!!!