June 9 - The Great Wall

My surprise for this morning was that we were meeting in the lobby at 6 a.m. Oh joy. Today was action-packed with one stop after another. We climbed onto our tour bus, made a quick stop to pick up three additional people from Texas, and then headed to a jade “museum.” Our guide showed us, through a glass window, workers sitting at their stations and carving out everything from bracelets to interlocking dragon balls. All I could think was why weren’t they wearing any face or hand protection? Ah, the marvels of the sweatshops. We ventured in a bit more, and were educated on how to tell real jade from fake jade. A few of the points were that if you strike real jade, it has a higher pitch to it; and real jade, which can come in green, reddish and white, is never completely solid in color; it should have “bits” in it. Jade, we were told, is preferable to diamonds, because its value increases over time. The older it becomes, the richer the hue. She then pointed to a white sculpture and asked us to guess what it was. It ended up being bok choy, and apparently if it is positioned the right way in your house, it can bring in fortune. (If you are familiar with the coin-in-the-mouth frog, it serves a similar function.) The reason I put museum in quotes is because as soon as our 10 minute educational section was finished, we were taken to a large showroom where we could – all together now – SHOP. Just in case we were curious about buying a bracelet, we were shown how to buy one. If you lay it over your hand, it should rest between your pinkie and that fourth finger. Anything larger and it will fall off. I looked around a bit, but wasn’t really all that interested in spending money, so I ventured to the front of the shop and sat on the steps, waiting for everyone else.

The next stop on this tour was the Great Wall, Badaling to be precise, where we would eat lunch. We all gathered around a huge table – lazy Susan in the middle – and watched as one plate after another came from the kitchen. They were nice enough to make me a plate of vegetables, which featured carrots, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower, but as anyone can guess, this won’t give you much energy. The bowl of rice was a welcome addition. I examined the plates as they went whirring around in a circle, and one was truly unappetizing. It was a full-sized fish – scales, bones, head, eyes and fins were all in tact. With the lunch ended, we headed out of the door for the bus. (Actually, we had to wait for some of the people to get coffee. Why so much coffee was necessary on this trip is beyond me.)

Our bus took us to a more scenic part of the wall. I guess this was where Mao made some kind of victory climb. Was it called Heroes’ Peak? On the way there we debated back and forth as to whether we would climb the mountain itself and then walk around on the wall or take the sky tram to the wall. I have no idea why anyone thought a mountain climb would have been the way to go. Walking around on the wall itself took hours, and was an exhausting experience. Climbing the mountain wouldn’t have given us any time to walk on the wall. Oh well. Everyone came to their senses and decided the sky tram was the way to go. This was my second tram ride – the first one being in Hong Kong – and this one was infinitely more harrowing. The car fit four people but we were crammed inside what looked like a pill capsule. It took us high above the trees and we felt every bump. I was glad to get out.

Out of the tram, you went down a bit then were presented with two choices: You could go to the right and begin a steep ascent OR you could continue straight, go around a corner, and then take a not-as-steep climb. Stupid me … I chose the right path. I’m not all that intelligent when I comes to percentages, but I would say the incline was about 45%. It was a monster bitch climbing that thing. Several things made it even more difficult. First, the steps weren’t uniform. You would take a huge step then a small one then a medium. There was no consistency. Second, when there weren’t steps, it was just slippery rocks. I’m glad it wasn’t raining. I decided to film my climb, so I could show people at home, and I sound like I’m close to a heart attack. I’m huffing and puffing like I’m a chronic smoker. And it just kept coming. I finally got to the top, and rested a bit. All kinds of people were up there – young, very elderly, and everything in between. The mixture of languages was interesting. Maybe more interesting was the fact that some of the women were wearing high heels! This was not the time to be fashionable.

The next move was to go down the other side, in a steep downward incline. I got about 100 feet. Stopped. Looked at the LONG stretch in front of me, and realized that if I continued going down, I would eventually have to turn around and climb back up. I think I said it out loud “Fuck this.” I was dripping with sweat. My back was positively soaked. And I was already half way through my Gatorade. I was giving up and going to the other side. Even though there weren’t stairs to navigate, it was still pretty dangerous. I had to hold onto the railing otherwise I could have tumbled to my death. Wouldn’t that have been awesome to put on my tombstone? Died on the Great Wall of China. It wasn’t quite as steep on the other side but it had a few spots that were ridiculously impassable. I’m sure I stood at one place for five minutes while tour groups filed past me both ways, never letting anyone else cut in. Very rude. And then in one spot it smelled of rank urine. A woman was mindlessly wiping it up with a wet mop.

We were supposed to be at the bus at 2:45, so at about 2 p.m. I jumped into the sky tram with a bunch of Chinese guys and rode it to the bottom. Thirsty and hot, I looked for some Gatorade. There were plenty of stands selling drinks and food, but as most were also selling the carcasses of dead animals, I decided to speak with my yuan and only buy from someone who wasn’t trafficking in corpses. (I think the animals were dead tanuki – Japanese raccoon dogs.) I finally found one stand. She not only had Gatorade but she had tomato flavored potato chips. The pop singer and sometime actor Jay Chou’s face is plastered on the bag. Food in hand, I started up the hill to the bus. I was side-tracked by a fluffy white puffball of a puppy. He was running around being cute, and I can never resist the urge to pet a dog. The minute I spoke in that magic dog voice, he came over to me. He was super soft, but a bit dirty. Thankfully he wasn’t a stray otherwise I would have snatched him up and smuggled him home. At the bus, we waited. And waited. Several members of our group decided that they would ignore the time, which would have been business as usual for us, but as we had those Texans with us, I felt increasingly embarrassed and annoyed. The lost members turned up half of an hour late. No apology was offered.

Our last stop was a silk “museum.” Our guide told us all about the horrible practice of silk making – hundreds of silk worms are boiled alive so that their cocoons can be unspun and turned into cloth – and then she showed us to the store. Buddhists are not supposed to buy silk, but I fell in love with some red pillow cases decorated with flowers. Thinking that these weren’t standard size, I figured that I should buy the pillows to match. Surely I will burn in hell for this purchase. Ha ha. Or I’ll come back as a silk worm and be boiled alive and then eaten by the Chinese. Seriously. I’ve always wondered what happened to those worms after they are killed, and our guide told us that the Chinese consider them to be a delicacy. They eat them so that they maintain a youthful appearance. Thanks, but I’ll just look like an old hag. If you’re wondering how I got the pillows into my luggage … these people think of everything. They suck all of the air out of the cases, so that the pillows are flatter than a laptop. This isn’t to say that it wasn’t a bitch getting those into my luggage. They were actually longer than my luggage, so I had to cram them in.

Since we had an early morning – the agenda says rise at 5 a.m. – we didn’t bother going out to eat. Instead, we dined in the hotel’s dining room. It might have been tempting, but I passed on tuna fish sandwich day three and instead had the buffet, which included fried potatoes and ice cream. (The latter was absolutely dire.) Afterwards, I went out for one last walk. It was late, but I’m glad I did it otherwise I wouldn’t have known that all of the main buildings and structures along Tiananmen Square are lit up until 10 p.m. It also gave me a chance to give the beggars some money. Maybe that would make up for the silk worm massacre required for my pillows. I doubt it.