Our guide is very thoughtful about the growth of China over the past 30 years...there is great disparity between the very poor and the very rich. Overall tho he feels that life is better for most people, at 42 ish he has watched firsthand as the changes evolved.
At Tien an man Square yesterday he noted that he grew up in the days of admiring Mao as the savior of the Chinese, but the younger people of China now don't think he was as great and they have all only in recent years understood the dark side of the man and his ways
The Square itself IS monumentally huge...it has historically been the place to dissent: unions, students, everyone. It was festooned with gigantic flower arrangements/sculptures in honor of the National Day October first..if we had come next week, I think it would have appeared more spartan.
There is concern that the government for the past 20 years has only considered the GDP and not the well being of it's people
Our tour of the Forbidden City showed us all that we had not known it was truly a city...most os us thought it had been a building or two...amazing and interesting...we want to see The Last Emperor again...it will have new meaning. The poor guy lived int the 1960s and endured tremendous change that must have been as heart wrenching as physically difficult
One of the museum pieces of the Forbidden City
The Wall is Great in every way...it is steep, the stairs are often shallow, you can see it rambling from you in many directions. The local farmers come to "help" you up and down the rail less, skinny, steep stairs
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We went to a lesser traveled section of the Great Wall, fewer "foreigners"
But there were still a large number. The sheer numbers of people, everywhere, is overwhelming.
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