My favorite experience in China was going to Beijing and visiting the Great Wall of China. There is definitely a reason for why they call it one of the Seven Wonders of the World. One of the best pieces of travel advice I can give to someone wanting to plan a trip to China is to go to the major site-seeing places on a travel-day (basically days that people are travelling to and from their homes before and after national holidays) This is because the population of almost the entire country is travelling and away from your favorite sights like The Great Wall, or the Terracotta Warriors, or the Forbidden City. The difference is ridiculous. I and a group of friends went to the Forbidden City on the actually day of whatever national holiday was happening, and the place was packed. It was difficult to get a picture anywhere other than the colossal open courtyards that are unique to Forbidden City. Thankfully, we planned our trip to the The Great Wall, or ChangCheng as the Chinese call it (which literally translates to long wall), on the travelling day after the holiday was over because it was so unbelievably empty. We could run down the wall for several hundred yards without running into anyone. It was pretty polluted that day too, so anyone who wasn’t caught up in trains, planes, or cars that day, weren’t really bothering with this usually very popular tourist attraction. Needless to say, it was a welcome change to the big city.
