The Great Wall

Now, for my favorite part of the entire trip, the Great Wall. I knew this was something I wanted to see because it is so famous, but I was completely blown away by the beauty and grandness of this structure. There are 4 parts of the wall that are open to tourists. The first two, Badaling and Mutianyu are close to the city, and therefore nicely restored and packed full of tourists. But for more of an adventure, we decided to go to the two farther parts, Simatai and Jinshanling, which are much less traveled, unrestored, and therefore, more historic. The bus ride was about 3 hours. I was pretty sure the bus driver got lost a few times, because he kept making U-turns, but we made it by 11am. From the parking lot up to the wall was an estimated hour walk, so Aiko and I decided to take the cable car up. The first glimpse of the wall just takes your breath away. How can it be so big, and it just seems to extend forever in each direction. I thought how it would feel to be an invading army long ago coming across such a magnificent structure. No way around and not easy to get over. Would they just give up and go home? Stepping onto the Wall, I felt special, and once again, so lucky to experience this.
These part of the Wall run through two provinces. The one in Beijing is restored, and you can really tell the difference walking on the two. The part on the surrounding province has not been restored, so it is crumbling, but it feels real and authentic. The weather could not have been better that day, sunny with a breeze. The Wall is quite steep in some places, so it was nice to rest in the shade of the turrets. Our guide told us some turrets were to send smoke signals when enemies were approaching, while others were used as General’s sleeping quarters. The section we walked was 10km, about 6 miles, but it was steep in many parts, plus with all the picture taking, it took us about 4 hours to complete. When you reach the end of the section, there are two ways to get back down. The boring way is to walk, and the exciting way is a ropeway where you are harnessed in, hold on, and glide over a river to the opposite side. Guess which one I chose! I was a bit scared, and almost didn’t do it, but I told myself there is really no reason to be scared, and just do it. Aiko chose to walk, so I gave her my camera, and she got a great picture as I whizzed by. She was disappointed that I didn’t scream. And I was surprised I didn’t either, but it wasn’t scary. I was actually really relaxed. It was a beautiful view, and a nice, smooth little ride.
Our reward at the end for finishing the hike was a great buffet lunch. As I said before, the food was absolutely delicious!
We arrived back at the hostel a little after 8pm, and we decided to walk around a bit in our area. We were very close to the Hou Hai Lake area, which is filled with restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. All the restaurants and bars were filled with people, and the dance floors too. At the entrance to this area, there was an outdoor dance party with dozens of couples tangoing. We noticed in Xian too many elderly people dancing outside in random parts of the city. Music would start up, and people got in lines to strut their stuff. It was great.
After doing a little shopping, we had dinner at an outdoor restaurant where we had our first taste of real Peking Duck. It was smoky, and quite good. We also had dumplings and a special fried rice. To drink, I had a Boba milk tea that was warm, and absolutely perfect because I was freezing without a jacket, and wrapping the tablecloth around my arms wasn’t doing much.
The menus in this area were quite entertaining. Since there are many tourists, they were translated into English. I am glad they were, because if they were only in Chinese, and I just pointed to something, I would have been very hungry after dinner. There were of course, beaks, feet, intestines, testicles, and pretty much anything found in or on the animals, but the funniest food we saw was “wikipedia.” I am so upset that it is blurry, but the menu says: “Stir-fried wikipedia,” “steamed eggs with wikipedia,” and “fried special wikipedia.” If anyone has any insights about what that could possible be I’d love to hear it!