The bad part was waking up in time to meet the girls for breakfast at 7 and the group at 730 but the best part was, we got to see the Wall! After a wonderful breakfast of french toast (Chinese style), we loaded up the bus and drove the roughly hour and a half to the Badaling Wall. Towards the end of the drive, we were going along gorgeous green mountain roads, and it was really foggy today so the fog was all through the mountains and it was just very pretty. At the Wall, we all chose the steeper path of the two directions to go, and began climbing. Alex and Josh decided to speedwalk the whole thing, so they took off with Laura while the rest of us took the time to appreciate everything around us. There was a HUGE Olympic logo on the one hillside, and everywhere else was just Wall, fog, mountains, and relatively few people because we were there by 9am. The part we were hiking was restored, but it was still ridiculous in its architecture. The steps were all uneven, a lot of sections should have had steps but instead were almost vertical slides, and there was about a two foot high hand rail, which was perfect for Jess but tricky for the rest of us to use. It was quite a calf walkout, trekking up what felt like hundreds of stairs and picking our way down steep ramps only to remember we had to walk back UP the ramps on the way back! There were vendors everywhere along the wall, which I didn't like. I felt like it almost cheapened the experience of actually walking along the Great Wall of China, but I still enjoyed the walk. Phil continued his trend of having more pictures of me than anyone else on the whole trip because Jess and I are "always in front of what I want to take a picture of!" It works out well, because I hate being in pictures and I never take them of myself, but now there will be pictures for everyone to see of me being in all these places!
We saw a lot of white people at the Wall, which was a plus. There were groups from Purdue and Weber State (UT) there as well! It was kind of cool to hear unaccented English (unaccented to us, anyway) for the first time in a week from people that weren't part of our group. We got to see all kinds of cool buildings along the Wall, and one of my favorite parts was the Chinese graffiti that is on every brick, basically. On the one hand, it's kind of sad that the Wall is defaced like that, but on the other, it's awesome because it's all in Chinese so it just adds to the look of it. Vivian explained to us the use of some parts of the Wall, like the smoke watchtowers, just like in Mulan! Jess and I were quoting the movie nonstop today, and people kept looking at us like we were nuts, but you HAVE to understand that the Huns didn't just run at the Wall or something, please. They used grappling hooks, obviously.
When we got to the end of the walkable part, our group hung out for awhile, taking ridiculous pictures of us jumping off the steps and waiting for the rest of the Pitt kids. One of the Chinese men with a fancy camera was taking pictures of us jumping too, and he showed us the pictures on his really fancy camera. We asked if we could take a picture with his son, who we found out was named Bruce (his American name) and is eight years old. He was probably the coolest kid ever, with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt and a Mickey Mouse hat. We made friends with our limited Chinese by saying hi and bye, while Rachel and Vivian asked his name and his age and other questions. His parents were so nice, letting us take pictures with him, and I think they were excited they had pictures of their son with a bunch of American girls! Heading back was much the same as before, with the ridiculous climbing. I was so glad I had my China shoes (which are NOT made out of porcelain, but were bought for the express purpose of visiting China), because they had great traction where I would've otherwise been falling flat on my face. There's no way you could climb that Wall if it was even the slightest bit slippy, and the Chinese guards must have been in incredible shape to walk it 24/7. The humidity of the fog completely killed Julia and I because of our asthma, and I had to whip out the inhaler for the first time all trip.
We headed back to meet up with the group to leave, and Julia and I decided to run down a really steep part to catch up with Brandon, Alex, etc. We started sprinting and almost caught up with them at the bottom of the hill and then....they disappeared!!! We looked aroudn but couldn't find them, so we we waited for everyone else at the bottom of the hill for about fifteen minutes til it was time to meet at the designated spot. We headed out the gates to where we were told to meet, and no one was there. So we waited, waited, waited. 1130, 1135, 1140. No one's showing up, so we started looking for them everywhere we could possibly go - no group. The funniest part was the two of us attempting to use a Chinese pay phone, when the English button only change the button saying "Menu" to English, nothing else! Vivian's cell didn't answer, Rachel's cell didn't answer, and we didn't know if we were dialing the right combination of numbers or anything. Julia and I decided we would have to write letters to our parents telling them we were lost in China somewhere at the Great Wall, but there's 10,000 km of Wall so we had no idea where! We looked around some more, and finally decided to wait for them to find us. 1155 we see Prof. Gao walking towards looking at us like he couldn't believe us. We were found!! It was definitely one of the highlights of my trip. How many people can say they were at the Great Wall, let alone LOST at the Great Wall?
We stopped at a noodle bar restaurant on the way back, where Vivian and I accidentally switched dishes, so I had green tea noodles with ginseng and chicken. They were so good, except for the fact that I kept getting soup all over my face, but everyone was having trouble so I didn't feel as bad. When we got back to campus we had a lecture on Chinese economics by a professor from Tsinghua. I didn't understand most of it, not being a business major, so most of the graphs just meant a bunch of nice colors, but it was a nice break for the business kids from all the technical stuff we've been doing. After lecture we just hung around campus for the rest of the night, walking around and seeing different places, and Vivian taught us how to say panda in Chinese. Tomorrow we have another Chinese lesson and a visit to the farm, so it should be interesting!
PS_the title of this post is a reference to a passage in one of my favorite books, and is intended for irony. The Wall is actually amazing. :)
3 comments:
haha told you that wall was a killer! I'm glad you got found again, it would be sad not to have a sister cause she got lost in China of all places. Hope you have fun looking at colorful graphs!
You made it to the wall! ... and almost stayed for a looong time. If you're going to get lost in China, you'd better pick up more in your Chinese classes. :) Hooray for China shoes!! Thanks to Phil for the pictures of my girl! Love you!!
Sounds like you and Julia need to lay off the inhalers!! It put you in a fog at the wall! Remember Kara's advice...."don't miss the bus" :)
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