Beijing Tour

We arrived in Beijing nearly 16:00pm, and warmly greeted by our first guide Cindy at the airport, a little girl with shining smile and she directly accompanied us to hotel to check in. The hotel looks very good, with wonderful Chinese structure and polite attendant. After had a short rest in our room, we went downstairs to enjoy Chinese dinner, great too.
On the second full day in Beijing, I took a tour with my guide Cindy, which visited a Ming Tomb and the Badaling section of the Great Wall. Almost every day tour in Beijing begins early in the morning and I was picked up, by a car, at seven-thirty in the morning, and our guide Cindy had worked as an interpreter during the Beijing Olympics. There were seven people in our group: a family of Canadians who were living abroad in Korea, an Australian, an American, and myself. The latter two individuals were also travelling by themselves so we formed an travel group for the day. Our first stop was at a valley filled with Ming Tombs. The Ming Dynasty ruled China from 1368 to 1644 and each emperor built an elaborate tomb to house his body and belongings. It was believed that an emperor would be reincarnated 30 days after his demise so it was important that his treasures be buried with him. Naturally, the Ming Tombs were a great temptation to would-be thieves; thus, they were clustered together in a heavily guarded valley. Our tour only visited one of these many tombs and it was a bit disappointing insofar as we didn't get to see any underground chambers (it's never like the movies). Instead, we saw the outsides of buildings, the burial mound, jewelry and period clothing. Afterwards, we stopped at a jade shop where we were told about the historical significance of jade. Every Beijing tour stops at some kind of shop where tourists are given a brief presentation before having time to browse. On this particular day, we stopped at a jade shop and a silk shop. I ended up purchasing some jade, but had little interest in the silk products. The final tourist stop of the day was at the Badaling section of the Great Wall. This section of the Wall is quite popular, because it is close to downtown Beijing. It is not the most scenic part of the wall, but it is the most convenient to visit. It was raining when we visited, but the Wall was still full of tourists. Despite the less-than-ideal circumstances, I very much enjoyed the two hours of walking time that we were given. Even if the area felt a little less authentic because of the crowds and the people hawking merchandise, we still got a good view of the surrounding area, and it was still the Great Wall!

So ,it’s the time came back to hotel, I was told that we will have a long walk in the forbidden city next day, so we need to have travelling shoes or any other kinds of comfortable shoes, Cloth Shoes is not a better idea. Oh, dear,where can I buy Cloth Shoes?