After breakfast, we took a walk on the “Wild Wall”. This section hasn’t been restored, and the
wall is not a complete trail, so we walked on the less technical part of the
wall. The village we stayed in is in the
bottom of a valley, and we were offered the chance to do a walk up either side
of the valley wall – we chose the easier option. The option we didn’t chose is the one you can
see in the photo. As we were taking our
“easy” walk, we saw a whole group of people walking up the other side of the
valley on the more technical section of the wall. Michael told us these were local tourists
making their pilgrimage to the great wall, and they chose to walk on this part
of the wall because, without the cable car, it was much more affordable for the
local people.
After an hour clambering up and down the wild wall, we
headed back to the village, and because we had some spare time we did a walk
around the town. The first thing that we
noticed was the sign saying that the town had been established to offer
accommodation to local people, and this whole idea was very new to Chinese
people, who are travelling much more than they ever used to because of their
increased wealth, and the access they now have to cars. In this small town, there were 19 places that
were offering accommodation to local people.
The next thing we found on our walk, was the exercise
equipment that was part of a park on the side of the road. This is all part of the Chinese push to keep
the local community fit and healthy.
Anne and I tried all the equipment, and created an instructional video
of how to use each piece of equipment, but in hindsight, now that we’ve
reviewed the video, we think it’s probably best if we keep the video to
ourselves.
Leaving the small town, we passed an area where there were
thousands of new fully grown trees being planted. We could tell they were just being planted
because each tree was supported by 4 large poles to hold it in place. A mile or so further down the road was a golf
course that was being constructed, and off in the distance we saw a large
semi-circular shaped building, that Michael told us was a new hotel. As we passed yet another new futuristic
looking building, Michael said and that is the Conference Centre for the APEC
Conference that is going to be held here.
“When is the conference” we asked
expecting the answer to be about a year away.
“In September”. We’ll be keeping
an eye out for the conference, to see how the facilities have bedded down in
the four months until it takes place.
Seriously, the conference facility wasn’t even fully enclosed, but we
have no doubt that it will all be finished and good to go by the time the
delegates arrive in September.
The trip back was very quick because of the newly
constructed APEC motorway. We were
impressed to see all the driver safety signs along the new motorway with a
little caricature to pictorialize the things you shouldn’t be doing - No
Sleeping, Drinking, Texting, Littering, speeding.
I mentioned yesterday that the Government restricts the
number of people who can buy cars. The
other thing that they have told people they can’t do is buy houses. The house price market has been growing
really quickly in recent years, and the solution to that is simply to tell the
people to stop buying houses. In
Michael’s view, this is a perfectly acceptable and normal response from the
Government, and the people are all more than happy to comply with the
Government’s wishes.
The only other thing that we’ve seen that is slightly odd
from our perspective, is that whenever we go to a restaurant for lunch, it’s
always a lottery as to whether Michael and the driver will dine with us. We are always happy for them to join us, but
the funny thing is that it’s not us or Michael that decides if they will eat
with us, but the restaurant.
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