I thought that yesterday's traffic might have been caused by the rain, but today dawned with blue skies and sunshine, yet we got to experience more traffic jams. There are so many cars that the local government limits the days that you can drive. Based on the last digit of your license tag, you can't drive one day a week. One day it is 0 and 5, the next is 1 and 6, and so on. But maybe they need to return to the odd/even rule that was used during the Olympics, because there are just more cars than the roads can handle. Today I was sitting in the front seat, so I got a good view of the traffic and gained even more respect for the skill of our bus driver. Although it is probably a good thing that I don't understand Chinese because I might have learned some new cuss words.

Before we reached the Great Wall we stopped at a cloisonné factory, where we watched the artists create the copper work and apply the enamel, and then observed the firing process . The finished products are very beautiful and very expensive.

We did not visit the restored section at Badaling where most of the tourists go, but rather another section where we were the only tour group and there were just a few individual tourists. This part of the Wall is called the Wild Wall and is one of the most authentic parts of the wall, but the steps and the walk ways were well maintained. Current estimates are that the wall once ran for 8,851.8 meters (or about 6,200 hundred miles.). Today, it is still about 3,750 miles in length. Separate sections of the wall were built between 403 and 221 BC, but it was under the first Qin Emperor, that the segments were combined into a continuous fortification.

After lunch at a family owned private restaurant, we returned to Beijing to visit the Olympic Village. The site of the 2008 Olympic Games is now very popular with Chinese tourists. The athletes' village is now condos, the water cube is a water park and the Bird's Nest stadium used for the opening and closing ceremony is used for soccer games and large concerts.

Our final stop of the day was a dinner theater performance of Beijing style opera. Because it was all in Chinese without English translation, and involved very stylized postures and vocals, it was difficult to appreciate. We left after the first act.