Beijing, the Great Wall, and Chinese Nerds

"Hey man get up, time to go."

"Blerargaahhhhh"

Its 2am. I can't remember where I am. I can't figure out how to turn off the alarm clock. Music is throbbing and for some reason I seem to be sleeping on a piece of wet cardboard that smells like the backdoor of a bad seafood restaurant. Am I drunk? Am I hungover?

Nope, I'm in a Chinese guest house. Good morning!

My erstwhile traveling companion Nate is attempting to rouse me after my 16 hour flight and hour and a half of sleep. Fortunately, I've planned ahead. I'm already wearing thick socks, tough pants, and a sweat-wicking shirt. And a headlamp. I somehow managed to fall asleep with my headlamp on. Fantastic. Well, time to go.

We stumble out of the guesthouse into the "street," which is really more like a giant pit because whoever owns the block chose that week to dig up every inch of traversable ground to put in new pipes (if you've been reading this blog for a while, you will recognize this as the very same situation I encountered on my first morning in Cambodia).

We make it to the end of the block by employing various technical climbing techniques, coupled with extreme leaping, and find a car waiting. Putting faith in our ability to overcome would-be kidnappers, we get in and start driving. We are paying way too much money for the privilege of a 2 hour car ride, a 5 hour hike, and supposedly lunch. Guess how much of that happened? Fortunately, we have a guide, sort of.

"Good morning! Do you want breakfast?"

Yes of course we do. Our guide (whose name I've forgotten so I call him "Pouty") digs into his bag and proudly hands around slices of white bread.

Value of trip so far relative to cost: low.

The driver rapid-fires some Chinese at the guide.

"The driver would like to be able to smoke a cigarette so he doesn't fall asleep."

It takes a few seconds to realize this is a question, to which we are only too happy to respond affirmatively. Smoke in a car from a cigarette is infinitely preferable to smoke from an exploding gas tank.

Confidence level in our survival: low

We drive and drive, through haze that sticks to you in nearly tangible gray clumps. My head lolls on the headrest, and I'm only aware of our movement when it stops so that our driver and guide can ask for directions. This happens far more often than you would hope. Finally (oh god...FINALLY) our driver pulls over on the side of a dirt road (a very steep dirt road) and orders us out. Glad to be doing something else, we hop out, flip on our headlamps and look around.

Goats look back at us. As does a towering, steep forest. Our guide takes a few tentative steps forward, smoking a cigarette. Eventually, something occurs to him (perhaps that he is a guide and not a tree) and he starts moving.

It feels good to be moving. Early morning, hiking up a nearly vertical wall, I remember several years ago when Nate and I were doing the very same thing half a world away in Chile. I smile, and press on, eventually looking back to realize our guide has stopped to smoke a cigarette. He is out of breath and looks confused at our pace.

Verdant greens flash under our lamps, and the damp ground gives just enough to make each step interesting.

Eventually, we see the high brick towers of the Great Wall of China. Sweaty, exhilarated, we stop for a moment to catch our breath

I know this looks like a sweaty morning in 'Nam...but it isn't. Thats just smog.









What do you mean I look ridiculous? Explorers are sexy!












Preparing for the final ascent...it was about 20 feet.







We climb a narrow flight of stairs, arrive at the top, and begin our wait.

We waited a long time. Japan may be the land of the rising sun, but in China its more like the "sun that drags its ass out of bed and sort of makes it up eventually." It crested a high mountain in front of us and took about an hour and a half to finally get up over the darn thing. Of course, we could only see it like a bit of egg yolk on some cotton given all the smog.



These are ancient Chinese portraits of the greatest warrior-poets in all of China.





Finally (finally!) the smog began flying away over a lower section of the wall, looking for all the world like ghosts fleeing a blinding light. You could watch the white tendrils stream over ramparts, and what it left behind speaks for itself:































And of course we took awesome-dude pictures, since we are awesome-dudes.









After snapping away for well over two hours (joined by a small group of hard-core Chinese photographers who had camped at the top all night just to get good morning shots), we hiked back down along the Wall. It is a remarkable structure, less for its height (which is impressive) but more for its depth and width. It would have been easy enough to build a high thin wall, but the Great Wall of China was easily wide enough for carts and people to pass each other comfortably. I'm sure I could google some measurements for you, but what fun is that. Just stick with the cart/person image and you'll be well served.

After making it back down to our car, we headed back to the guesthouse. Nate, having already done the "Beijing thing" too the afternoon off, while I hopped in a cab to go see the Olympic structures. I'm going to be brief here because I can be. The buildings, sculptures, memorials, and other variegated hoo-ha related to the Olympics were all:

1) very large;












2) very interesting looking;































and 3) very crowded.




Crowded with NERDS!




On a hot day, surrounded by people and having trouble breathing, I wandered about for a while, paid way too much money to get inside the "water cube" (an honestly cool building, worth a visit) and then paid way too much for a cab back to my guesthouse.

...which largely ended my time in China. We hadn't intended to spend much time there in the first place, as we had other, different goals in mind. Goals specifically involving yaks and horses...ONWARDS!

Next: This train ride is HOW long?...Ulaan Bataar, its everything you could want in a post-apocalyptic future, with Communism!...and our first foray into sustainable-eco-green-local-agri-feelgoodaboutyourself-toursim!