On the Great Wall of China

Hi All;

I had a lovely visit in China, seeing a few of my employer's offices there. My colleagues hosting the visit knew I had not been to China before and they kindly took me out to see some sights on the Sunday prior to my meetings. Our first stop was to see the Great Wall of China, at Mutianyu. They asked me if I would like to sky cab to the top, or skycab down, or skycab both. I chose skycab down, so we proceeded to walk up. And it was up and up and up, many stairs to get to the top. I am sure they knew how far we had to walk, but I did not and for awhile the steep line of steps seemed to go on forever ! Most of this was under some tree canopy, so there was a bit of shade which was good. Also, the sky was cloudy and a bit overcast, so the sun did not beat down on us. I am grateful for that bit of luck, because just a few days later the weather was very hot, 36 on Tues, 37 on Wed, and so forth ! That might have made such a hike up rather unbearable.

On the way up, one of my host/colleagues, Lance, spotted a gorgeous butterfly on the stone step riser of one of the hundreds of steps ahead of us. I was able to photogrpah it, it was a great find and its colors almost blended in with its stone surrounds, other than its yellow and red markings ! I am sure to paint this, because it is very beautiful and captures my imagination for making it into a lovely painting. And lately I have wanted to paint in blacks and whites with just a bit of feature color to add interest. This sight and composition will be an apt subject to carry that idea out.

Further up, we got to the top and here to the below right you see me and my hosting colleagues, Lance and Alan at the top of the Great Wall. I enjoyed the rest of this visit so much, it was an amazing sight and the Wall is truly an amazing feature and also feat of engineering. The surrounding terrain is very rocky, mountainous and rough. It must have been so difficult to built this long boundary fortress.

I have more posts and catching up, so check back in the coming

days and visit to see more of my inspirational photos from my visit to China. Next post will have some of the photos I took at the Imperial Palace, aka Forbidden City. There I found more statues to photograph, a number of them possible subjects for my Guardian Statues series of paintings. And a lot more, just a feast for the eyes with colors and patterns and a lot of rich history too.

More next post !