The Great Wall

I still cannot believe it. I have grown up seeing pictures of this world wonder—one that was only accessible to me through visual media. But today, that all changed. I walked across the Great Wall.

We hired a tour guide who met us at our hotel with transportation at 9 a.m., and were whisked away one and a half hours outside the city to the Wall. We drove through poor villages, beautiful farmland that reminded us so much of the Central Valley of California. As we got closer to our destination, another area with a poor village on one side of the street, and vacation homes on the other. This really highlighted one truth of China: that while one street can separate the two, the gap between the rich and poor is, in reality, vast. As our van wove through more countryside spotted with Chinese tourist traps, and further up into the mountains, we spotted it. High upon the ridges wove the Great Wall itself.

Due to the amount of traffic (think Grand Canyon National Park), we hopped out of our van as we neared our destination. After short hike up part of the hill, a short pit stop (thank goodness I had brought my own TP…the restroom had run out!), we purchased our tickets for the gondola, which would ferry us the rest of the way up the mountain. You can choose to hike up to the Wall, but today we chose to gondola it in order to save some time, because we planned on visiting the Summer Palace also this day. The mountains here are very steep, and we were definitely grateful for the gondolas! After a short ride--and no incidents--we were there. Touching and walking on the stones of the ancient Great Wall.

I still do not know if I can believe that I was actually there. The view of the Great Wall was extensive and breathtaking…yet I was walking upon its stones, and climbing its guard towers! It seems so surreal…as if the glass surrounding historical artifacts in a museum suddenly melted away, and all the patrons began to handle the artifacts and make use of them. This is a national treasure of China…and I was allowed to dirty it with my shoes and with the corrosive oil from my hands!

Highlights and interesting moments from the day

· Beijing is very different than Shanghai! Even though Shanghai has a denser population, Beijing seems crowded just about everywhere you go. ESPECIALLY in the subways. That has been a shock! Our subway trips have already been an adventure of sorts…an adventure to another place where these things happen…

o …our subway car’s doors cannot close, because a few people are half in, half out, trying to squeeze in. A Beijing Subway staff member, who earlier had been directing people around the platform with a bullhorn, walks over and pushes those people in—packing the whole subway car like a can of sardines. Yes, this was our first experience of professional subway pushers!

o …we begin walking to get into the subway car, but the force of the pushing from the great mass of those behind us half-carries, half-squeezes us into the car. Ai ya!

· We visited the Capital Museum, the architecture of which is astounding! My favorite exhibit of all was the ancient paintings. What struck me about many of these paintings was the level of honesty and reality they were given. Many were portraits of emperors and high-ranking officials, and when I looked into their painted faces, I could see the real person. I saw scraggly beards, one droopy eye, large eyes, almond eyes, and fat cheeks. This honesty really touched me—why exactly, I am not completely sure—but perhaps it was because these paintings portrayed people who were once flesh and blood, and human. Not cold, stone, unmoving statues.

• For dinner, we ate at Peter’s Tex Mex Restaurant. It was the first Mexican food that we have had (not made by ourselves) in a long time now. Eating those burritos, fajitas, enchiladas, chimichangas, tacos, and listening to mariachi music, I think we all found ourselves transported outside of China for the evening. It was a lovely mini-vacation within our vacation, and I think that we might be back for another before returning to Yantai.

Arrival in Beijing!

We are so excited to be here in Beijing! Getting here took longer than we expected (mostly due to the fact that our one-hour flight was delayed for almost an hour), but we are here! We are staying in the lovely Inner Mongolia Grand Hotel that is a stone’s throw from Tian An Men Square and the Forbidden City (okay, that is an exaggeration, but we are CLOSE!) Besides the proximity to these famous locations, our hotel also has soft beds! This is an oddity for China, even for hotels in China. Oh my goodness…we have not slept in a soft bed in 8 months (minus the week in the Philippines), and it is soooooooo comfortable. J We are very happy to be here, and are so excited for all of the amazing sights that we will be seeing.