enjoy tour

A somewhat anonymous region, Hebei has two great cities at its heart – Beijing and Tianjin – both of which long ago outgrew the province and struck out on their own as separate municipalities. In the south, a landscape of flatlands is spotted with heavy industry and mining towns – China at its least glamorous – which are home to the majority of the province’s seventy million inhabitants. Though most travellers pass through here on their way to or from the capital, few stop. The sparsely populated tableland to the north, rising from the Bohai Gulf, holds more promise. For most of its history this marked China’s northern frontier, and was the setting for numerous battles with invading forces; both the Mongols and the Manchus swept through, leaving their mark in the form of the Great Wall, winding across lonely ridges.North China Plain the Wall The first sections of the wall were built in the fourth century AD, along the Hebei–Shanxi border, in an effort to fortify its borders against aggressive neighbours. Two centuries later, Qin Shi Huang’s Wall of Ten Thousand Li skirted the northern borders of the province. The parts of the wall visible today, however, are the remains of the much younger and more extensive Ming-dynasty wall, begun in the fourteenth century as a deterrent against the Mongols. You can see the wall where it meets the sea at Shijiazhuang, a fortress town only a few hours by train from Beijing. See more...http://www.smilingglobe.com