Day 6 - Visting the Great Wall and the 4th of July

Trip Start Jun 28, 2009

Trip End Jul 26, 2009

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Flag of China Beijing, Beijing, China
Saturday, July 4, 2009

Today we went to visit the Great Wall of China which was a surreal experience. On the way to the wall we stopped at the jade factory. Apparently it is a requirement that bus drivers stop there. They had a lot of stuff, but it was mostly overpriced.

At the Great Wall, there was two different ways you could go. To the left was more steep and challenging, but less people. To the right was easier, but had more people. We decided to go to the left. First, the wall is not flat at all. It is located in the mountains, so you are constantly climbing up or going down. Some the areas are ramps that are so steep, that I was afraid that I would loose my footing, start sliding down and not be able to catch my self. Other areas had stairs. Now I don't mind stairs usually, but these were challenging at times. The stairs were varied in size from a couple inches high to as high as my knee which made them very difficult at times. We picked a spot on the wall that we could see ahead, really the farthest point that we could see, and we started walking towards it. We literally stopped every few minutes to let a couple of the older people catch up. While waiting for them, we did meet some other people. The wall is littered with hundreds of people, mostly Asian. So, just like the rest of the trip, it is nice when you see someone that looks like they might speak English. Half the time they turned out to French or German so they don't speak English either. But we did meet some Canadians from Toronto. The wall was fairly wide at most places, about the width of a one lane road.

To really paint the picture of the wall, I do have to talk about the vendors.

Lee, Jill and I on the Wall

The wall, just like every other landmark has many vendors trying to sell you things ranging from t-shirts to artwork, to handbags. The are extremely pushy to the point that sometimes you feel assaulted. They have neat things, but it is like a cars salesman times a thousand, so most of the time it is not worth looking.

When a couple of the guys did not want to continue, Jill and I picked out a farther point to walk to. Once we arrived there, we picked a farther point. This continued until the last point was as far as you were allowed to walk as there was reconstruction being done on the next section. The view from the top of the great wall is breath taking. You can see mountains for miles and miles. The Chinese also constructed a "Hollywood type" sign for the Beijing Olympics next to the wall. It is a unique sight to see the old right next to the new. It seems in a lot of ways Beijing was changed for the Olympics.

The walk back down, took less than half the time of the walk up. When we got down, I went with Richard to buy a shirt that said "I climbed the great wall" Well they wanted 130 yuan for the shirt (about $20). We bartered with them for a while and got the price down to 20 yuan (about $3) so it was a decent deal.

After the great wall we went to the Ming tombs where 13 emperors are buried. We were not there for too long, but like any sight, there was amazing Chinese architecture to see.

We as a group decided that we would celebrate July 4th by going to the Hard Rock Cafe.

Vendor on wall

We split into groups of 3 and 4 to get taxis. Getting to the Hard Rock Cafe was an adventure in and of itself. I think I have mentioned this before, but the Chinese drive extremely crazy. On the way there, we almost got into four accidents. At one point we got cut off and the taxi driver was cursing in Chinese. But, the adventure did not end with the taxi ride. We get dropped off at an hotel and the driver told us to just go through the hotel. The hotel staff did not like that and point us around the building. After making almost a complete circle we end up in a dark alley in front of a building with 5 China flags. Now the more flags a building has, the more important the building. It also had concertina wire around the top of a wall surrounding the building. And in case that did not deter you, there were shards of broken glass embedded in the concrete on top of the wall sticking up. We come to a gate and one guy suggest we jump it. Does the building I just described sound like one you want to mess with? So cooler heads prevailed and we walked around and finally found our way to the restaurant.

It was a good time inside. We got to each American food, except for the one guy who decided to order Chinese food. It was mostly Americans inside. A large group of American exchange students were celebrating as it was one of their last days there. The had a Filipino band playing American music like Journey and Cold play.

After the Hard Rock, a few of us went to check out the night life in Beijing with the one guy with us who can speak Chinese. It was an interesting experience. We saw an Asian Micheal Jackson impersonator who was actually pretty good. The four of us, one being one of the Fulbright evaluators, really got a great chance to discuss the program and the outcome objectives of the trip.

It was a great days of extremes from the great wall to celebrating the 4th of July in a foreign city.