Bei Dai He, 01/10/2005 at 23:00
Day 14: Huangyaguan – Eastern Qing Tombs – Zunhua: Biking on the Graveyard
A very warm day awaited us on this trip with a spectacular stop-over at the Eastern Qing Tombs. We noticed that fall is starting here in China. Leaves fall to the street and it also quickly gets cold in the evenings. As mentioned this day was warm – also when we arrived at the Eastern Qing Tombs.
When we had seen the first major building of these sacred emperial burial grounds we already thought that it was the actual tomb of the first Qing emperor. Huge and massive it stood there right in front of us. It turned out to be a mere shed compared to the actual tombs a few kilometers down the road. It’s an amazing area with huge tombs in the shape of temples made for the emperors, empresses, their concubines, servants, etc., etc. The area was that of a medium-size town, so we decided to skip a part and move on towards Zunhua. We got there by dusty roads, checked in to the best hotel so far, and found a place to have dinner. The owner of the restaurant thought it was very special to have us there and served free dishes for us to enjoy.
After having slept on rice pillows for several nights it was very nice with a descent hotel with descent pillows again…