After my first trip to Beijing, I made another trip in 2002 but this time it was for leisure. There were a lot of changes to the city back then. Cars were now the kings of the road and the humble bicycles were slowly but surely disappearing from sight, while skyscrapers were sprouting out of the ground everywhere. As the modernization of Beijing progressed, I took some time to see some of the disappearing sights.
There is a Chinese saying, 不到长城非好汉 which literally translates into “He who has not been to the Great Wall is not a true man”. How did this come about? Read on to find out. So during my weekend in Beijing, I had the Sunday to visit one of China’s, and also mankind’s greatest engineering achievements, to see and climb the Great Wall of China.
My first trip behind the bamboo curtain was a business trip in 1997. It was a trip to give technical training to one of our Chinese customers who had bought our equipment. Normally, such training sessions are not stressful. But as this customer was in China, I had to give my training in Mandarin. As an indifferent student of the Chinese language, and attaining just a bare minimum passing grade in school, I was beginning to wonder if I should had been paying more attention in Chinese language classes.
Continue reading “Beijing’s Imperial Past”
Beyond the Little Red Dot 