Style Gallery Blog

When you think of China, you think of the Great Wall of China. The Wall has become iconic of the country. It has been said, “You haven’t been to China if you haven’t seen the Great Wall of China.” And in 1935, Mao Zedong famously said, “If we fail to reach the Great Wall we are not men.” This picture of the Great Wall of China was taken near to Badaling, just north of Beijing. This is by far the most popular tourist location on the Great Wall’s 6000km length. It is also the most heavily restored section of the wall. Much of what you see today is not the original wall, but the modern restoration. For most tourists, this is fine. They get to see the wall as it was and wonder at how it was constructed. However, if you walk up the mountains to the end of the tourist zone, you will find the view above. Here we can see the restored wall come to an end and leading into the distance is the original, unrestored, Great Wall of China. Signs warn tourists not to proceed any further and these should probably be heeded. By restricting tourists to the restored sections, we leave the other sections untouched. The should be left alone, undamaged.

The winters in the North East of China can be extremely harsh. Temperatures in the Liaoning city of Anshan, where this picture was taken, can fall as low as -22°C before any wind chill has been taken into account. It is a biting cold that quickly attacks any exposed skin, causing your face and hands to become sore and red. The north east of China is also know for it’s heavy industry and grime. The buildings of Anshan usually show that grim industrial landscape well. However, on the day of this photography, it had snowed overnight and the sun was out in a clear blue sky. Just for a minute, it created an image of beauty out of drabness.

Ulanhot is a small city in the north east of Inner Mongolia, in the north east of China.  It is a remote, dry and dust place with little for the tourist to see. I went there twice back in 2006, to teach English at the high schools there. I was the first foreign teacher to visit their schools, as so caused a bit of a stir with TV and Newspaper reporters following me everywhere. I asked my students, what interesting things are there in Ulanhot for a tourist to go and see. They thought about this for a while and finally settled on an answer—the supermarket. The city had recently had a small supermarket open and this, the students thought, was the highlight of the city for any visitor. There is in fact some interesting things to see. To the northern end of the city is a temple dedicated to Gengis Khan, the great Mongol king who united the country and built the great Mongol empire that would later engulf China and most other Asian countries as far as the Middle East, and even the eastern edge of Europe. This picture was taken from my hotel window looking northwards. The weather outside was a bitterly cold minus twenty something degrees.