Archive: 2008-03-24
Dodging the crowds at the Great Wall
You can’t go to China and not see the Great Wall, can you? Well, I did: I missed it last time! So this time I took a day trip to Bādálǐng (八达岭) to see the Great Wall of China. Badaling is the easiest part of the wall to get to from Beijing and, for the same reason, rather crowded. The Great Wall is the most-visited attraction in the world, and Badaling probably constitutes the bulk of that. Even on a cold Monday in March, the ambience was, in places, more that of a rush-hour subway station than a historical monument.