The scenery outside of the city of Beijing was really something else, definitely beautiful. There were mountains everywhere, but they looked different than the Rockies or the Appalachians for example. They were more rounded, and nearly all of them had terraces built on them to support agriculture. I’m not sure if they still grow things on them today, but there were rows of trees neatly planted that probably provide fruit when it isn’t so cold out. We finally caught site of the Great Wall after a couple of hours, and I was at least pretty excited. We parked and began our hike up the wall to see the sunset! I had heard it was tough to climb the wall, and it never really registered with me. After all, it is only what? Like 30 meters high? It never occurred to me that to get to the wall in the first place you have to climb a mountain, so after a 30 minute hike up this mountain, we made it on the wall. We were early, so I hiked up to a bit higher point on the wall, and from there took way too many pictures and saw the sunset. The wall is so beautiful, words really don’t describe it. You know you are at a wonder of the world when you take pictures of it and when you go back and look at them, they all look fake. One of the ones that I took with me in front of the wall honestly looks like I Photoshopped myself in over it, though I promise I didn’t! We climbed back down the wall and had our first meal with the China Guide. When they are in charge of the meal, we go to restaurants and they order for us. So the tables hold 9-10 people and have a huge spinning glass center where they put food and we serve ourselves family style. They bring out so many dishes and I tried everything, most of which was delicious. I was told real Chinese food was a lot different than in the US, and while it definitely was different, it wasn’t that bad. We still got dishes I wouldn’t be surprised to see in the US. The major difference with real asian food is that they use more mystery vegetables and meat that you don’t ask about, and the rice is AWESOME. I am going to eat more rice when I go home for sure, I’m a big fan.
We left the restaurant and headed to a different section of the wall. The first one we were at was the Jinsaling section, and the next one where we stopped was the Simatai section. At the Simatai section, we got all geared up in our cold weather clothes, it was below freezing, and began to climb up again. This climb was far higher and more taxing than the first one, and we were all exhausted by the time we reached the top. We found a guard tower that had sleeping bags and drinks all ready for us and set up camp, ready to sleep on the wall! The inside of the tower filled up quickly, and the only places open were next to the door and next to the bucket that people used to relieve themselves, so Jay and I joined some others outside on the wall under the stars. While it was a great experience and one that I’ll always be able to talk about, we were idiots to sleep out there. Even in two sleeping bags, and all of my clothes, shoes, jacket, etc, we were still freezing. I hardly slept at all, pretty much in sporadic 10 minute spurts all night, and by the time we woke up at 5:30 am, my whole body was pretty much numb. I was convinced that I was going to die. We woke up that early because Vince told us the sunrise would be then, though it didn’t actually happen until 7:30, but whatever works. The sunrise was beautiful, and I took plenty of pictures again. We ate breakfast and set out on a hike across the wall. The hike was over 4 miles of pretty rugged terrain. For those who picture the wall as a well maintained thing with a smooth surface on top (I know I thought it was), it is NOT. It is hundreds of years old, and falling apart in places. It is very much a hike and not a leisurely walk. The hike however went quickly and was a lot of fun. I warmed up in no time and was in the first group of people the whole way. We went the whole time without taking any breaks so I was proud of myself for making it. I took even more pictures, which looked even more fake because the wall is so darn cool, and eventually we were at a shady suspension bridge that we crossed to the end of our hike.
At the end of this section of the wall is a zip line that we were told we could take down for $6. When we arrived it was all shut down for the holiday, but Vince made some phone calls and we got a guy to run up and start it for us. Pretty much the whole group did the zip line, and Jay and I were the 2nd people to go off of it. I think I put a picture up of the thing, so check it out, but this was a very long zip line. It went over a really pretty lake, and the whole ride was more than a minute long. For those who have zip lined before, a minute is forever on those things. It was probably dangerous, but a ton of fun and we got through it with no problems. We walked to the busses, waiting for us at the bottom, dropped off our coats, and ate another delicious meal at a restaurant nearby.
After that, the whole bus was exhausted and starting to get sick. Again, sleeping outside in sub-freezing temperatures was probably a bad idea, but it will make a great story. We boarded the bus for the ride back to Beijing, waved goodbye to the wall, and collectively passed out for a couple of hours. When we got to Beijing, we found ourselves at the Olympic village from 2008, site of the Bird’s Nest and the Water Cube. The main stadium, the Bird’s nest was huge and really an architectural marvel. The Water Cube was alright, but you really have to see it at night to get the full effect I think. It isn’t a cube either, it is way longer than it is tall, but they didn’t seem to mind J. We went back to the hotel after that and rested for a couple of hours before having dinner free to roam around. We ended up at a mall in some section near to our hotel and wandered around there looking for cheap food. We ended up at a place called Fugong Noodles, where I got fried rice (Good) and some noodle bowl with raw egg chilling in it (Not Good). Still a bit hungry, Eric, Jay and I broke off from the rest of our group and went to Dairy Queen to get Blizzards. It goes against all my beliefs about not eating at places you can find in the states but I don’t even care, I wanted a Blizzard. Eric and Jay stopped at McDonalds to get a Big Mac and fries, but at that point I had eaten my fair share. We had some time to kill so we went to an awesome Chinese arcade where we played a racing game, some basketball, and a tribal drum game with the same concept as Dance Dance Revolution. You hit the drum when it tells you to on the screen and it was a lot of fun even if we sucked at it. We left there to meet up with the rest of the group again, walked back to the hotel and crashed hard.
The next morning we grabbed the same breakfast at the hotel again, and met our guides in the lobby at 8:30. The first stop we made was at the Temple of Earth. There are four big temples in Beijing I guess, Fire, Earth, Heaven, and some other one. This turned out to be pretty much a huge tree garden area surrounding a courtyard that was decked out with carnival games. This was the big day of the Chinese New Year, so there were performers and stuff out, but it was really pretty boring. I ended up getting lost from the group, leaving early, and checking in with my parents. I found the busses and waited there till everyone got back, and we then took off to the Hutong district for a Rickshaw ride! The Hutong is an older neighborhood in China, as in hundreds of years old, where the buildings are fundamentally the same as they were way back in the day. It was cool to see, and we got to ride Rickshaws through the whole thing. We stopped and ate a meal prepared by a family in their home and learned a little bit about Chinese lifestyles. Their homes are far smaller than ours, with little personal space to relax. If there is any space for relaxation, it is shared between multiple generations living together, or even multiple families. The food was great, and afterwards we finished up our rickshaw ride and got back on the busses to head to the Summer Palace.
The ride to the Summer Palace was about 45 minutes, and after another short nap we arrived. The story of the palace is worth telling. The last emperor of China in the early 1900’s I believe was very young, and while he was too young to effectively lead the country, the “Dragon Lady”, some relative of his, took over running the country. Afraid that when he became of age he would seize her power, she built the Summer Palace and confined the emperor to it. While it was a huge area, similar to the Forbidden City in size, the emperor was unable to leave the palace for basically his entire life. The palace was filled with gardens and the architecture was very stereotypically Chinese. There was a corridor called the “Long Corridor” which was something like 700 meters long, and had over 700 beams with a unique hand painting on each. There was a lake in the center of the area which was beautiful, and the whole thing was really neat to look at. After making the rounds through there, we set off. We were a bit early, so we had time to go to “Dr. Tea” which was a tea house somewhere in Beijing. There, we tried different kinds of tea for free, and ¾ of the people on the trip ended up buying some to take home. It was delicious, but not being the biggest tea drinker, I decided to save my money for something more useful. We relaxed there until it was time for dinner, and we set out to have Peking duck!
Eating duck is apparently necessary and traditional in China, so it was part of our trip. We went to a restaurant that was a bit more upscale and had delicious food. They served us much of the same stuff that we had been eating elsewhere, but at the end they brought out the duck. The duck was full, head and all, and fried or baked or something to a nice deep brown. They cut it up for us, and brought us a small tortilla thing, sauce, and vegetables to eat with it. I actually was not a huge fan of it, the actual meat simply tasted like turkey and the skin was a little too different for my tastes. I did try it though! Everyone was stuffed after that meal, but we pushed on and headed to the Beijing Opera to see an acrobatics show. The show was amazing, very similar to Cirque du Soleil with a bit less of an artsy edge I suppose. They did all kinds of tricks, and had a laser light/hologram system that made the whole thing that much better. I took some great pictures of it and have a couple of videos too. The pictures will probably be up by the time I get around to this post actually. There we ran into a couple of other groups on official SAS trips, so afterwards it was mass chaos trying to find the right busses. Usually we can just follow the white people and it works every time, but this time there were like 9 busses full of people I recognized. We made it of course because we are awesome, and headed back to the hotel.
That night our tour guide Vince decided to come out with everyone, so we headed to some district whose name I can’t remember nor pronounce, and went to a bar there. I got separated from the rest of the group I was with because I was waiting on my friend Jill to come down, but we ended up finding everyone really easily. There were people from SAS trips who ended up there and I ran into a bunch of friends of mine which was nice. I had seen only the faces on the same trip as mine for 3-4 days at that point, so it was good to hang out with others for a couple of hours. Many of them were on the Beijing/Xian trip, which is the one I was signed up for but backed out of at the last minute to save money. I’m royally jealous of all of them for seeing the Terra Cotta warriors, but I will be okay. We had plenty of fun with our extra time in Beijing! That night was a ton of fun hanging out with everyone, and we ended up leaving for the hotel pretty late. Unfortunately our hotel was in the middle of nowhere, so none of the cab drivers knew how to get there. After asking at least 10 of them, we finally just told one to take us back to Ho Hi, and walk from there. We got lost, had to ask for directions at another hotel we ran into, but finally made it back and went to bed to catch our few hours of sleep.
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