China: A Visit to the Wall*

Our second day in China we climbed the Great Wall at Badalling, its highest point. The Wall there runs beside the logo for China’s 2008 Olympics: “One World One Dream.” (Look hard.)

Here are Lucy, Nettie, and Irene as we started to climb in the blustery cold. Nettie and Irene made it to the Wall’s highest point, which is, they tell me, beyond the farthest tower at the left of the photo above. I got only as far as the second tower in the same photo.

While waiting for the women to come back, I took an emblematic picture in which the river apparently winding through the rugged hills is in fact a highway.