This was truly a vacation of a lifetime and Viking did an incredible job that made me rethink the value of their high priced cruise. The Great Wall, Forbidden City, Terra Cotta Warriors, and Potala Palace are all marvels of the modern world. My concepts of magnitude have been redefined by the size of China cities, the age of their culture, the speed of their industrialization, and the scale of their projects.We were awed by the unheard of cities of Wuhan and Chongqing that are both larger than NYC and have technologically absurd city light shows. Beijing and Shanghai are both three times larger than NYC. We saw the Marquis Xian of Jin bells that were over 3000 years old, amazed that over 70 bridges have been built across the Yangtze river in the last 30 years, and stunned at the magnitude and impact of the 3 Gorges dam project.
It's hard to imagine the Great Wall extends over 13,000 miles although the best preserved parts of the Ming Dynasty Wall is only 5,500 miles long.
The Forbidden City was the home of 24 emperors over 492 years and covers over 180 acres, however, we were not able to enter any buildings.
I was surprised to learn that all of the Terracotta Warriors were destroyed by farmers after the death of China's first emperor. Only a fraction of the estimated 8000 warriors have been painstakingly reconstructed.
I was not familiar with the Potala Palace in Tibet but was impressed by its size and religious significance as the home of many Dalai Lamas.
Shanghai is one of my favorite cities and I was glad that we visited the Oriental Pearl Tower that featured a lookout level, the Space Capsule, the glass bottomed corridor, revolving restaurant, Fantasy World, and the Shanghai Municipal History Museum.
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