Good gracious, Great Walls of China...and 798

So this past weekend being my last weekend in China, I thought it would only be right to finally see the Great Wall. Uncle Mao, aka Chao Ma took me in his awesomely cool, european ford focus hatchback, that is quite a fan favorite amongst the ladies. This bad boy is red and has sport bucket seats. I must admit to you, as much as ford focus' are pretty weak in the states, the ones out here actually look pretty good. Nice buy Chao.

So Chao and I went to the famous badaling section of the Great Wall. It's still pretty cold in China, and it was raining all weekend, so there was actually patches of snow up on the Great Wall. While the snow created a beautiful setting, it made it extremely difficult to walk up and down the stairs and sloped sections of wall. Chao and I both fell, but not to worry, our cameras were fine. Kind of sad when the first thing you reach for when you're about to hit the ground is your camera. Here are a few shots:

Chao striking a pose

my infamous foot shot

Some people know that I like to take this foot shot in random locations. This one took quite a bit of maneuvering as I laid on the ledge of the wall. Chao held on to me like a scared girl would hold her teddy bear after a bad dream, but what was a bit scary were the old ladies trying to get by us as I took the picture. Maybe it was our mistake for taking a picture next to the ledge, but apparently people don't care if you stop, they'll just walk right on by. Instead of holding onto the metal railing, one of the old ladies thought it would be a good idea to hold onto my arm. Unfortunately for her "hold" meant "push" so I did a little harlem shake on the ledge and Chao pulled me back to safety. That would have been one way of seeing Great Wall I suppose.

After the Great Wall, Chao and I went to an old military base area that was now being used as an art space. The place was called "798" and it was filled with rows of various art galleries by local and international artists. A lot of it was under construction for the Olympics, but we were still able to see some very strange art. Here are a few of them:

not sure if this was part of a gallery, or it was real graffiti, but still cool

Being around all this art made me want to be artistic, so here's an attempt me of trying to take a few cool shots of the construction workers. I really like how bright their orange vests are. That's all for now. A big thanks to Chao for taking me around!