I'm back from China

I'm back from a very short business trip to China. I must say it's hard to go so far and see so little -- physically hard because the long trip (14 hours nonstop, 12 time zones difference) takes its toll; mentally hard to visit such an intriguing country with such limited time. I must go back on my own dime, someday soon.

I did schedule in one free day, and I used that to go to a section of the Great Wall just outside Beijing. To get to the top of the wall required a ride on a chairlift, something I didn't fully realize when I signed up. Not being particularly fond of heights, I spent the seemingly endless ride to the top reminding myself to breathe, and engaging in stilted conversation with my chairmate in order to try to forget about the treetops and craggy rocks passing by far below our feet. Judging by his stilted efforts to return conversation, he was going through the same thing (although he later denied it).

The wall itself is pretty impressive, and walking along it as it hugs the steep hills is quite a workout, with breathtaking scenery. But the area we were on has been restored, so it didn't really feel like something thousands of years old, and to fully appreciate it one had to walk along with it with an active imagination, thinking of the work that went into building it (millions died constructing it over centuries) and the men who stood guard along it.

As an odd finale to this trip, an option for getting back down the hill is a metal toboggan run that is probably a mile long and a high speed thrill (despite guards stationed along the way with megaphones yelling at you to slow down).

Within Beijing, I also had an opportunity to explore the Lama Temple, a beautiful complex originally built in the late 1600s for court eunuchs (says Wikipedia) and then later turned into a Buddhist monastery. Pics below: