Walls: Great and city...

The Great Wall is really cool.  I did a cartwheel on it.

A couple of friends and I went north to the small(er) city of Shan Hai Guan on a bullet train to experience two grand sections of the wall: Jiumenkou, the only place where the epic wall crosses a body of water, and the Dragon's Head, where the wall finds its end at the BoHai bay in the Yellow Sea.
Here is Jiumenkou, redone and original sections stand among the mountains and terraced fields.  The frozen river adds to the majestic scene of this world wonder.

The Dragon's Head was more than impressive: the surrounding frozen sea, the crisp arctic wind, the dramatic end to the most epic of human wonders.  It easily produces a sense of wonder about the whole construction of this piece.  In a word, the wall is mighty.

It was so freaking cold here.  Whoa.  But I got to stand on the frozen ocean (and see this epic end) so it was worth it.

The city of Shan Hai Guan has a population of about 400,000.  Up here, based on Beijingers, one is outside of contemporary China.  The older parts of the city lay inside the giant city wall.  The hutong holds numerous treasures, crooks and crannies, and once again the dramatic walls of China impress.

We walked inside the wall for a couple hours and a Russian fighter jet was giving us a show all the while...take-off/landing exercises we guessed, it was pretty cool.

I did a handstand on the wall too.