The Great Wall (7,583 miles)

Today we walked the wall, ate a state supervised lunch, and toured the Summer Palace. The Great Wall is breathtaking. It winds effortlessly up and down the mountainside. Leslie, our guide, pointed us in the direction of a short hike and we were off. The steps are unpredictable. The idea that anyone would run a marathon on this thing is shocking. We sang the Rocky theme and ran about 100 feet before we stopped...for photos of course. Again, we were the only westerners and we were popular. Aji and I were ok, but the Chinese, they looooooove Chris. Maybe it is his blond hair, rugged good looks, or they think he is Russell Crowe. Whatever it is we spent a great deal of time posing for photos and shaking hands with all our new Chinese friends. If this is fame, sign us up. We got to hear some pretty cool drumming. Aji is hoping to be their next protege.

Later in the day, we went to the Summer Palace. It was a huge lake surrounded by temples and ornate buildings. Along one side of the lake is a very long walkway. It was an incredibly peaceful place. Within the arch of the walkway there were over 7000 individual paintings. Some of them told famous stories like this one: The Story of the Straw Warriors: There was a small army on a boat approaching its enemy. Low on ammunitions they felt out gunned by their enemy. On the boat, the leader ordered his army to make many straw men. The army set the straw men on the deck of the ship and then moved into attack position that night. Onland soldiers saw a boat filled with soliders approaching. They quickly moved into attack mode and began showering the ship with arrows. By morning the ship escaped taking all of its enemies arrrows with them. The were able to collect the arrows from the straw dummies and use them to stage an attack the next night.