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August 02, 2001

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* Bada Ling *
Whew, almost didn't make it by the end of Thursday. Yeah, like you wouldn't have gotten today's email anyway. Just Northwest of Beijing by a few hours' drive is the Great Wall at Bada Ling. I got the wonderful opportunity to see this spectacular place on my first trip to mainland China back in November of 1994. My dear friend Li Wei and her husband were so very kind to drive me up there to see this wonder. It was quite an incredible sight to see as it climbed and fell, winding up and down and around over the steep slopes of the surrounding hills and peaks and dotted the horizon for as far as my eyes could see. I heard an old Chinese man tell me that he thought it looked like a long tail of a dragon as it slithered along the landscape off into infinity. Of course it took him and a few younger friends quite some time and several tries before they finally were able to put it into words that I could understand. A wonderful treat while I was over there was the fact that is seemed like I was a celebrity everywhere I went. There were so many people that would smile and wave at me. They would come right up to me and appear to take such delight in the opportunity to practice using their English on me.     Although I had learned very little Chinese, they would get such a chuckle at my feeble attempt to speak their language as well.