More castle-like objects

[ellarien]

The Great Wall, at Juyongguan Pass to the north-west of Beijing, climbs steeply up the side of the hill, punctuated by towers -- some open, some roofed -- every couple of hundred yards. The roofed ones have steep inside staircases to the upper level, and window openings looking over the hills.



The fort down in the valley has some impressive multi-story gate buildings.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Wow, those are magnificent!

[ellarien]

Thanks! I wish the light had been better, but it was Beijing in July, without benefit of the draconian smog-fighting measures they used for the Olympics.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the absence of smoggy dragon-fighting measures ("hullo; I am a smoggy dragon, please don't fight me...") results in Atmosphere: unbreathable, but lovely to look at...

These are great. I have travel-envy, and photo-envy too.

[ellarien]

Thank you, both for the compliment and for the image of the smoggy dragon.

The highest concentration of dragons is probably in the Forbidden City, which was also on the smoggy side.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

You're only doing this to provoke my travel-envy, aren't you? Plus my dragon-envy, of course. (Tho' may I point you to m'friend Dan's book Dragon in Chains, just to prove that we have a few good dragons on our side too...?)

[ellarien]

I've added that to my shopping cart ...

[kicking-k.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought, less eloquently (and without dragons, other than hidden ones accompanied by crouching tigers).

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Hee. When I was in Taiwan, I was exploring the night market with a lovely Canadian who spoke Mandarin; and I found this gorgeous little teapot with a tiger on the lid, and when you lifted it there was a dragon on the inside; and it had four Chinese characters on the side, and I said "What does this say, then?"

"Um, I'm not sure - it seems to say 'Tiger lying down, secret dragon', but..."

"Ah," I said. "Crouching tiger, hidden dragon?"

Exit blushing Canadian. And yup, I did buy the teapot.