I’m visiting the William Lindesay family in China for two weeks as they take me to points all along the entire Great Wall. You can read the backstory at my website or here on my blog along with all my posts while in China.

Xi’an, China
Thursday, September 24, 2026
11:55 PM

Today began the tourist phase of our journey. Up till now it’s been a “working vacation” as we’ve joined the Lindesays in promoting “One Wall, Two Williams, Three Nations.” The three nations being China (the Wall), Great Britain (William Lindesay) and the United States (my grandfather William Gei).

I think we’re all really confident these past 10 days have been an enormous success. We’ve met and celebrated many people. And probably hundreds of hours of video have been recorded for what we expect will be wonderful television productions to spread the word and advance the Great Wall project.

Personally I’ve been up on the Great Wall five times at four locations, with a sixth visit still in store.

Today in Dunhuang, William, Qi and Tommy escorted us to an important and popular Chinese landmark, the Mogao Caves, or the ‘Caves of a Thousand Buddhas’. Tomorrow and Saturday we’ll be in Xi’an visiting the Terracotta Warriors and Shaanxi History Museum. So stay tuned.

The Mogao Caves, or ‘Caves of a Thousand Buddhas’

We were out bright and early this morning to the Mogao Caves — quite impressive and not what I was expecting.

I was envisioning deep caves that we would descend down into. Instead the caves are more like “rooms” carved into the mountainside.

I won’t presume to offer a scholarly history but instead refer you to the UNESCO World Heritage website or the Center for Public Art History website. Photos are prohibited inside the caves so I didn’t take any. For great pictures I refer you to Getty Images where there’s a large collection.

These are some of the pictures I took outside:

Flight to Xi’an

Our flight to Xi’an was preceded by a near disaster. Upon arriving at the airport I suddenly realized I didn’t have my phone. Panic set in.

We quickly determined I’d mistakenly left it in the Uber-type car that drove us to the airport. I sat in the backseat, I’m guessing the seat belt confused me where I thought I was returning my phone to my holster when in reality I was slipping the phone between the holster and seatbelt. When I get out the phone was left on the seat. However it happened, the phone was gone!

But have no fear. The ever-resourceful Tommy calmly called the driver who came back with it. Crisis over. Mercifully.

The flight turned out to be among the bumpiest I’ve experienced, but the sights from the window were spectacular. This 5-minute video looks down as we fly over mountains and the Gobi Desert.

Arrival in Rainy Xi’an

We landed in Xi’an about 5:30 PM, encountering our first rain of the trip. There had been a brief shower while in Tangzigou but it ended pretty quickly and didn’t impact our activities.

Traffic leaving the airport was bumper to bumper. By the time we arrived at the hotel it was too late to eat out and the hotel restaurant was closing. So David and I ordered dinner by room service. It was a very pleasant meal together.