Tom and Misheil Visit the Great Wall

On Sunday Tom, Misheil, Margot and I visited the Great Wall at Lianyunling.

This is the same section that we visited with Sue, Bob and Alyssa last fall. You can review that visit here for background on this section of the Great Wall.

Great Wall at Lianyunling

There are 1100 steps up the mountain to get to the entrance to the great wall. Yes, I was pretty worn out by climbing that many steps. Tom and Misheil raced ahead and decided to go even higher.

This is the view of the tower in the 1st picture from a higher section of the wall

Tom and Misheil decided to continue on up to the tower at the top of this picture. This section of the wall is overgrown and unrestored.

Here is a closeup of them at the tower. Misheil is in the doorway and Tom climbed up onto the roof area.

Click to enlarge.

One section we all climbed is so steep that they installed a chain to help you get up and down.

Click to enlarge.

In the previous post about the Temple of Heaven I noted people taking wedding photos there. Same at the Great Wall. Check out the lower left of this picture.

The Huairou district where this section of the Great Wall is located is known for its fruit and nut orchards. There are a large number of farms or orchards that city dwellers can visit for a picnic or to pick fruit. They seem pretty popular and there seemed to be a fair amount of traffic going to the places.

This is a sculpture about 10 or 15 feet high promoting the tourist area attractions.

We visited the same cloisonne factory that we have been to before. The process involves soldering copper wire onto a copper vessel in the pattern desired.

There is some more information about the process at this link.  Cloisonne

In the next step the pattern is filled with pigment/water mixture.

The vessel is fired for about 5 minutes to evaporate the water and fuse the pigment. This is repeated  5 to 7 times to completely fill the pattern.

After the last firing the vessel is polished with 3 successively finer times of stone.

The copper is then plated with gold.