Author: Keegan

The Great Wall of China! It was originally created to defend the Chinese Empire from Mongolian and Manchu enemies in the northern territories. It was built over a 2000 year period by several different Emperors.

While in Beijing we also went with Paul and Anna to see the Great Wall of China – one of the Seven Wonders of the World!  I don’t know why but before we left home the one place I wanted to see was the Great Wall of China.  Maybe it is because of the movies like; Karate Kid and Kung Fu Panda.  There are different parts of the wall that are available for tourists.  The part of the wall we went to was called Mutianyu.  The cool thing about this place was that you could climb up stairs to get to the top or take… a ski lift. We chose the ski lift and to hike along the top of the wall.  We are glad we did because even after the ski lift the walk was really long and hard, there is so much to see. After hiking through parts of the wall that are really in good condition we hiked to another area where the wall was a bit broken down but we kept on going into a “non-tourist” area and there was no wall left just little pieces of the wall here and there. The wall had a lot of stairs to climb up and down as you went along.

That's Kendal and my mom, this was just a part of our hike - it was so hard but really fun. The wall was constructed sporadically starting in 221 BC during the Chin Dynasty.

The Great Wall of China - one of the Seven Wonders of the World - this was a great day!

Here we are at the non-tourist area - it was worth the danger and extra time it took to get there. During its construction the wall was also called "the longest cemetery on earth" because so many people died building it; more than one million people died

On the way back down Kendal and I were trying to talk like we were from England and Anna and Paul were trying to talk like they were from the US . . . it was so funny we couldn't stop laughing.

One of the really fun things about the wall was going down. When we went down we got to TOBOGGAN, YEAH it was ssooo much fun except there was an older lady in front of me (no it isn’t my mom jeez why would you think that she was even old… just kidding just don’t tell her that EVER) and when we finished 15 minutes later (it was supposed to be only 5 minutes lol) this lady was like OMG I went ssssssooooooo fast she was so proud of herself.  Okay enough with this slow lady. After that we went to a restaurant that was pretty good. And that my friends was the Great Wall of China!

Here I am getting ready to fly back down but actually I ended up going pretty slow. The wall is said to be the longest man-made structure in the world. Some say that if you combine all the sections of the wall together it is 1000 miles longer than the distance between New York and California!

We are pointing at the "non-tourist" area I guess we were pretty proud we went there. The girl on the left was traveling alone and she joined us for the day. She was about to start medical school in the US but wanted to travel for 6 weeks before she started . . . she was really fun too.