- HubPages»
- Travel and Places»
- Visiting Asia»
- Eastern Asia
Sponge Bob Flies Over the Great Wall of China
a rare sight in the Middle Kingdom
One of the great things about living in China is getting to do things that you really can't do anywhere else, such as flying a kite on top of the Great Wall of China. We had already planned the trip a couple of days beforehand and were out shopping for something else, when my buddy decided to buy one of those reel things for kite string that all of the "professional" kite fliers use here in China. I thought it might be cool to try to fly a kite during our Great Wall tour, and when looking over all of the kites that they had, I chose the Sponge Bob one in honor of my 4 nephews (and my new 1-week old niece, whom I am sure would love Sponge Bob just like her brother and cousins.) Actually it was a tough choice between Sponge Bob and Kung Fu Panda, but Sponge Bob has recently become the number one cartoon in all of China, so I thought that I could impress not only my nephews but the locals as well with my US$1.50 Sponge Bob kite.
Our destination was the Mutianyu Great Wall of China on a Tuesday afternoon, and the weather was perfect, with clear skies and a temperature of about 73 degrees. Mutianyu is a great section of the Wall about two hours north of Beijing, and a great place to see the Great Wall during a Beijing vacation because it is usually much less crowded than the closer sections of Juyongguan and Badaling, plus it is located on a mountain covered with many different species of trees and you can see the Great Wall stretch out in different directions for miles on a clear day.
Unfortunately the winds weren't that great for kite flying that warm March day, but we did get it to fly for awhile. My nephews loved the pictures, and I can always tell the story of the day that I flew a Sponge Bob kite over the Great Wall of China - how many people can say that!