China: Beijing & the Great Wall

After a semi-decent amount of sleep we all manage to make it to the 0830 bus on time. We take an hour long bus to the Beijing International Kongfu School.

We all pretty much pass out on the bus, trying to recover from such small amounts of sleep. When we arrive, we are greeted by people running around with snaking dragon costumes. They lead us into a gymnasium filled with seats.

Now at this point everything's thinking that going to a Kongfu school is going to be stupid. After a few minutes of sitting around in the chilly gym, the curtains on the stage open with no introduction and boys and running across the stage doing crazy kung-fu moves, also known as Wushu. They were all about high school aged and dressed in yellow outfits. They would run and jump and spin around entertaining us. They did a few short segments. They did one where they reenacted a jungle scene of animals attacking one another. Then at the end they each were spotlighted and did special moves. One showed off his moves then broke a bowl with his finger, another broke a sword, and one broke a huge, thick stick.

After the show they took pictures with us, let us play with their weapons, taught us some moves, and let us wear the dragon costume and run around in it.

They taught us about how Wushu is a combination of brawn and brains. It is used for fighting and sport and also artisticly as dancing. Everything they did was so well choreographed and planned. It's a huge part of traditional Chinese culture.

We thanks them and said our goodbyes and got back on the bus for another hour long drive to a restaurant out in the countryside. What should have been a lovely nap for all was actually game time per order of the tour guide. She made us play the numbers game. We weren't allowed to not participate. And if you stopped paying attention and messed up you were forced in front of everyone to sing a song. I just wanted to sleep, but the poor hungover people. You could figure out who was hungover based on who lost. It sucked. Again, we felt like we were 8 years old. I think everyone wanted to kill our tour guide at this point.

We were never so glad to get to lunch and off this bus as today. We had left the city and were out in the countryside with beautiful mountains. The restaurant was inside of a huge greenhouse and was brightly lit up by the sun. The food was delicious, again. There was spicy chicken and beef and soup and the typical appetizers. I could get used to real Chinese food.

After lunch we were heading to the Great Wall. One of the highlights of my SAS trips in general. You could see the wall snaking across the mountains as we approached the section we'd be climbing. This was by far one of the craziest things I've ever seen.

We got out at the base and walked uphill through tons of little vendors set up trying to sell you anything and everything. "Pretty lady!" I heard that phrase way too many times. Some of the people even tried to take our names down to come back later and buy stuff. We avoided them as much as possible. Part way up to where we were taking the cable cars was a camel. So excited I started taking pictures. The guy started yelling at us telling us we had to pay to take a picture of his camel. We could also ride it for 20 yuan. YEAH RIGHT. But I do heart camels. All the same I snapped some sneaky camel pics.

The cable car took us 6 people at a time. So it took forever for everyone to get up. The view was spectacular and so crazy. I still can't believe we went to the Great Wall. We were at the Mutianyu section of the wall. The Chinese name for the Great Wall is Wan Li Chang Cheng, or "the Long Wall of Ten Thousand Li." The first sections were built as early as the 5th century B.C. when a number of Chinese states in the north were fighting against each other and occasionally against the northern "barbarians." It wasn't until the unification of the empire under Qin Shi Huang Di in B.C. 221 that the various sections of the Wall were linked up. It is said that more than 300,000 men worked for 10 years to complete it. The wall has a pounded earth interior with stone facing walls and stone roadway along the top. It was built wide enough to allow a brace of 5 horses to gallop between the battlements and was thus used to convey soldiers, arms, and food with great speed to various parts of the northern frontier.

We took so many pictures getting up to the Wall and then on the Wall itself. We walked for about an hour and a half. Looking into what used to be Mongolia. The mountains were so glorious. We got a gorgeous day. It was probably in the 60's. And here we were dressed for 30's with sweatshirts, sweaters, fleeces, gloves, and hats. I'm so glad I didn't buy a jacket for this trip like a lot of the people on it. It was sunny with clear skies. The perfect weather for hiking along. I couldn't get over the views of the mountains and the Wall snaking along the tops of the mountains. Everything was kind of brown and dead, but I got some sweet pictures. I posted them on facebook.

The Great Wall was an almost spiritual experience, between the beauty and thinking of all the men burried in the walls and in the hills.

We got a really cool picture that I'll have to get ahold of. We all sat on the wall half hanging over the side. With one leg over the other side you could really feel the cold breeze. It was about a 30 foot drop down to the base of the wall and then the mountain itself was pretty steep.

Towards the end of our hike the girls I was with and I split a beer so we could say we drank on the Great Wall. At different points there were people selling drinks, postcards, and food. Strange. There were also little forts every few hundred yards.

When we got to a certain point along the wall, there was a toboggan course that went down from the wall, down the mountain, to the base. It was so cool. I was a little scared at first, but it was awesome. I have now not only been to and on the Great Wall, I've also tobogganned down it. So sick.

We all bought stuff at the little market before getting back on the bus to head out to dinner.

It took about an hour to get back to Beijing where we had dinner at a local restaurant. This food was spectacular. Fried tofu, spicy chicken, soup, and other great foods with some jasmine tea. Deliciousness.

After dinner we headed to the Chinese Acrobatic Show. This was such a great show. It had crazy colors and stunts and costumes. Men came out and were jumping all over the place. When they left and the women came out I was a little disappointed, but they ended up being even better than the men. They rode around on one bicycle with about 10 of them piled up and hanging off the top. The men spun around and stacked 5 up and held up the women. There were also birds flying around amidst the lights and colors. So awesome.

I can't believe what a great day that was. We headed back to the hotel to pack up. We had an early morning the next day.

A bunch of us walked to McDonalds for burgers. Then we went and bought a ton of fireworks and firecrackers for the Chinese New Year. It's legal to set them off in the streets anywhere. The cops just watch on. You can also set them off really close to buildings. We set ours off in the middle of a street by the hotel. Cars would just drive around them since it was such a common occurrence. The whole time we were in China you'd see them going off everywhere and you could hear them all night long. Some of them were so legit. They went off above the tall buildings and cracked so loudly.

Once we were out of fireworks we walked to the bakery and got some cake and pasteries for the morning. After a 7 11 run we went back to the hotel to get some sleep before our early morning flight to Hong Kong.