Vykort 22 GWoC

Då har vi passerat drygt 60% av den totala sträckan, närmare bestämt 2216 km och vår tjuguandra vykort kom!

Tjuguandra vykortet

Zhongwei is a small city located on the northern bank of the Yellow River. North of the city and on the edge of Tengger Desert are remnants of the Great Wall. It was built during the Qin Dynasty (210 BC – 259 AD), when China was unified for the first time and served as a minor pass during the Ming era.

The walls were built out of earth and stone only, unlike the sections to the far east that were reinforced and covered in bricks. This led to extensive erosion of the Zhongwei Wall that was impacted further by the Tengger Desert’s ongoing expansion. The shifting sand has swallowed many towers as the desert continues to move south towards the city of Zhongwei. Some parts of the Wall have been erased completely with the growth of local industrialisation.

Just to the northwest of Zhongwei Airport’s runway is a very large, solid, mud-brick tower with a wall enclosure that was possibly either a fort or a fortified gate of the Wall’s pass. The line of the wall vanishes here to only appear sporadically for the next 150mi (240km).

The main landmark in the city is the maze-like structure of Gao Miao Temple, where China’s three main religions – Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism – are combined into one. The temple has a staggering number of pavilions, up to 260, that are connected with bridges, leading up and down between levels. It is beautifully decorated in bright colours with Chinese dragons on its rooftops, bells hanging off the eaves and more than hundred religious sculptures inside.

The quirky attraction at Gao Miao is actually the underground display of statues, suffering different forms of punishment and torture, meted out based on the crime committed. These strange and gruesome scenes are meant to depict life in hell based on ancient Chinese legends.

This may seem like a unique or unusual ‘attraction’ but it is not dissimilar to the ‘Ten Gates of Hell’ on display in Haw Par Villa, Singapore.

It is certainly not for the faint of heart or for the young.