A Breathe Taking Experience
 

From Beijing we arrange through our hostel an easy and affordable day trip to visit the only man made structure on earth visible from outer space.

We are picked up early and join a group of others for about a three hour drive to the Jinshanling area of “The Great Wall”.

A brief introduction of the area and we are given a few options on how to go about exploring this over 700 year old part of China's history.

It is a beautiful day as we board a cable car for a destination that we never reach but we have a sometimes breathless experience trying to get there. Nonetheless, our journey turns out to be amazingly awesome.


Video:http://youtu.be/ZyGX39zUYzw

From the title, I thought you were going to write about how bad the air pollution is in Beijing.

Your video's title is a Breathless Experience ...

Kathie,

We were fortunate on several visits to Beijing to not have to experience too much of the air pollution.

Having lived in Los Angeles in the 80's, I have suffered through my share of smog alerts.

On the right day visiting Beijing and The Great Wall can be a nice experience.

I hope others are not discouraged from seeing the world from the negative reality or things that are written about a particular place or country.

Shanghainese,

One day maybe I'll become a professional poster like many others here with proper gramma an spellin... or maybe hire a script and/or video editor.

Unfortunately, I spend most of my extra money on travel so I won't be able to pay too much :(

Descending The Great Wall

Our hike down the wall is just as cool as it was going up although thankfully a lot less strenuous. We do pass a few annoying “show-offs” racing up the same portion that made us almost breathless. Luckily for those “whippersnappers” I did not have my walking cane.

Even though we had seen the same landscape before it is still amazing from a slightly different perspective. In reflecting on our upward journey, we realize the wall is not as wide as we thought it would be but in some portions it was a lot steeper and more difficult to navigate than we expected.

In the end, we are definitely glad we made the journey. From the wall we make a stop for a late lunch then interestingly because of traffic congestion on the outskirts of the city we are given the option to ride the Metro back to our hostel.

Packed in like overweight sardines, riding the Metro at this time of the day was a challenging and fun finish to our day visiting one of China's most prominent landmarks.


Video:http://youtu.be/lSuTSoNFVT4

It is a space- based myth that the Great Wall is visible from outer space:

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/space/wor...reat_wall.html