Sonntag, 22. Juni 2008

Out of town again - Erdoguan





Today we could still feel our two hour kungfu lesson from yesterday in our feet, but nevertheless we went out of town again to the Erdoguan section of the Great Wall. Erdoguan is basically the least croweded Great Wall place I've seen so far and the least restored as well. That explains why it is not the most suitable spot to hike on the wall, but a tiny path leads through the wall from one farmer's village to the next, not too exhausting a hike (although the sun was burning down on us) with a view on the unrestored wall. The workforce of hundred thousands of workers built the wall, but the workers were not buried under the wall as is often claimed, because as experts say: "the builders of the Great Wall were no fools, they knew that a buried body under the wall would rot and leave a hole." Well, this shows that there is a lot of myths about the wall there but of course they are often just that:myths and not the truth.


An old man from the village where we started our trail showed us the way and came along. His family has lived out there for many generations and earns a living from agriculture, i.e. of peaches, plums, persimmons and other fruits. I learned from him that the sun spots (German: Sonnenflecken auf der Haut) on my arm resemble star formations in the sky (waggon etc). Well, he definitely was creative :-). Amazingly, the crops are now ripe and the villagers spread the crops on the street to dry or split it (well, if we understood it correctly, the cars can also drive over it to help split the crops, but I do not know whether this is reasonable???), so one way of the road out there you could not drive on, but it was used for agricultural work. They also spread fruits like peaches on the floor to dry it there (see last photo).

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