Another Beijing Blog...

 (Mark)

 

Bet you're all dying to hear about our adventures here in Hangzhou (which are numerous and exciting, by the way), but again, that's not what my blog is about. No, no, this time you get to read about the Great Wall and Peking Opera! This, like my last blog, was also more than a week ago, so again, I apologize for fuzzy details.

 

That day was the longest day we've had on the trip. It started much earlier (around 8:15 or so), and went till about 9 at night. It was very tiring, especially considering we climbed a section of the Great Wall! That is actually what we did first. The drive out to the wall was about an hour and a half. Oh, on the way we stopped at a jade carving factory or something, but aside from the feng shui cabbages and the dragons that don't poop, it was pretty uninteresting. As we got into the mountains near the Wall, we passed fragments that were either once part of the wall and had been destroyed/fallen apart, or that were attached to other parts and actually stretched on past the mountains. It was pretty cool. We stopped at the Badaling section of the Great Wall, also called the North Pass. On his trip to China, Richard Nixon, along with his wife climbed this section. Mao Zedong also climbed this, and wrote at the top that 'anyone who reaches this point is a hero." with these words in mind, Obama Lama set out to conquer the climb. It was absolutely amazing. We were there on one of the very few clear days we had in Beijing, and from the wall, we could see for MILES around. We could see rolling mountain tops off in the direction of Mongolia, and other sections of the wall stretching in pretty every direction. It was amazing to actually BE there.. just like the Terra Cotta Warriors. The view made the climb somewhat more barable. It wasn't a particularly long ascent, it was just that parts of the wall are INCREDIBLY steep, like probably 50 or 60 degree inclines to the horizontal, maybe even more. Most of these parts have stairs, though some of them were just inclines with a hand rail. Even the stairs weren't easy, most of the steps were knee-height or taller, making the climb that much more difficult (especially for me...). So yea, it was pretty intense, and we passed through an old guard tower on the way up, which was pretty cool. After about 50 minutes, we arrived at the top. I was looking forward to seeing Mao's writing, but I'd missed the memo: the government removed the writing and put it somewhere more special in Beijing for the Olympics. No writing for me. We stayed at the top of the wall for a while, took some individual and group photos, then headed back down.When we reached the bottom, we had a little more time to walk around the entrance area, which is filled with a bunch of different merchant stalls and such, and a few bear pits. Allison bought a bunch of stuff for herself and her class, and I was considering buying a dragon. I did a lap around the shop I was in, and the woman followed me trying to sell it. Simply by ignoring her, I got her to lower the price from 180 RMB to 30. yay for "haggling." The bear pits each had 1 to 3 black bears in them, but they were nothing like black bears I've ever seen before. They had a huge amount of scruff or something around their neck area, which made them the cutest things ever. We all just wanted to hug them, but we decided that'd be a bad idea.

 

After the wall, we headed to the Cloisonne Factory, where we saw copper pots being made, and ate lunch above a large, way overpriced store. We then headed to the Ming Tomb, which was about halfway between the Wall and Beijing. When we arrived, we first walked down the Sacred Way, which is basically just a really long walkway with statues of animals and guards and stuff on either side of it. Somehow I'd dressed warmly enough that I was fine on the wall, but I was FREEZING at the tomb, which contributed to my feeling that it was kind of boring and uninteresting. After the walkway, we went into one of the actual tombs. I was expecting this to be a LOT of fun, but was sadly disappointed. Apparently, the tomb USED to be really cool and impressive, but in the Cultural Revolution, everything in it was completely destroyed. Everything in there now is a replica, it isn't remotely original. The whole place just felt like a museum or something--it was too bright and modern to feel like a Ming Dynasty tomb. Quite the letdown, I'd say.

 

From there, we headed back into the city. Me and Lianna fell asleep on the way back, but apparently we passed the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. It was dinner time when we got back, so Ashley brought us to a Peking Duck restaurant. It was the BEST duck I have ever tasted. But I felt like the whole thing about wrapping it up with veggies and sauce kind of ruined it. Oh well, it was still very tasty. As tradition dictates, we then headed to a Peking Opera performance. Our expectations were VERY low for this, as we all knew how bad it sounds to western ears, but it really didn't turn out that bad. There was a lot of music, and not nearly as much singing as we'd expected (which was fortunate... their "singing" is more like screeching). It was pretty boring though, because the show completely lacked a story. It was translated to english on an LED display, and some of the translations were really funny, so all of the westerners in the audience were laughing quite a lot, but I don't know if it was meant to be comedic. We left after about 45 minutes of the show, figuring we'd at least tried it.

 

So yeah. We headed back to the hotel, stopping at DQ on the way for some ice cream (I had a banana sprit! it was delicious!), and watched Juno, which was on HBO. Then, completely tired out from the day, we went to sleep.

 

Perhaps I will blog again tomorrow. If I do, it'll be about Hangzhou! Finally. We'll see. We're celebrating one of Alex's host brother's birthday, so I might be too tired. You can hope though!