The Wall, et al.

It's Saturday, our last full day in Beijing. Kori's in the shower, and we're all hungry for breakfast, so I won't write about all the things thoughts that woke me up and followed me into my bath -- Anne Lamott, the gender of God, and my professional/personal/artistic shortcomings -- all topics that are best left for another time and probably another venue. 

(I'm here to talk about the Great Wall of China, so I should also probably refrain from making snarky and uncomplimentary comparisons between China's wall and the one the U.S. wants to build between itself and Mexico.)

Okay.

The Great Wall is, as they say, great. Great as in huge, great as in important, great as in terrific. Joe, a local guide, picked us up from our hotel yesterday morning at 8:30 and took us about 2 and a half hours outside of the city to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China. Most tourists go to the much closer Badaling section, but that section can be a bit touristy. 

As I've mentioned before, Beijing is enormous. It took about 45 minutes to actually feel like we had left the city, and for the next hour and a half, it still felt like we hadn't really left. I was amazed to find bustling, tree-lined streets, factories, restaurants and shopping centers stretching far, far, into what had once been countryside. Amazing, but not terribly interesting. I took a brief nap, and when I awoke, everything looked exactly the same: people and cars and industry everywhere. I'm starting to get a feel for what a billion and a half people looks like.

Finally, the scenery began to change -- the road, once straight and wide, now snaked through an increasingly hilly country -- and the mountains began to emerge in the distance from the thick, white fog that blanketed the horizon. About 15 minutes from the Wall, the road became noticeably steeper, as we gradually made up the difference between Beijing's 120 feet above sea level to Mutianyu's 3,000-something above. 

We parked our van and hiked a steep, paved incline lined with souvenir vendors hawking various t-shirts and silks, tea sets and statuettes. We reached a small cable-car station and bought a ticket for the ride to the top. It would have been theoretically possible for one to hike up mountainside, but tremendously impractical with small children. We'd soon find out that the wall itself was sufficiently daunting for our little family.

The wall wasn't exactly uninhabited, but it was anything but crowded. As we reached the top of the stairs, we stepped up into the first watchtower, looked out over the hills and realized for the first time exactly where we were. We were standing on the Great Wall of China; one of the greatest feats of engineering and architecture ever attempted. It was spectacular. I'm sure we've all experienced those great vacation letdowns -- we arrive at some over-hyped destination and say, "Meh, it's okay, I guess." The wall was not a letdown.

Stretching out from one edge of the sky to the other, the wall hugs the mountain, bisecting its length like the spine a some great, sleeping dragon. End to end, it's about as long as the continental United States is wide, amazing in theory, mind-numbing in person. It's also surprising steep, which since it's essentially an elevated mountain path, makes sense. An hour or so on the wall is a great workout, especially if you're carrying a heavy backpack. I was a bit sad to leave after such a short time, but neither Kori nor I were willing to make our tired kids go any longer.

We took the cable-car back down the mountain, and headed back toward Beijing. We asked Joe to take us to a restaurant that serves traditional, authentic Chinese food that the area's common people would eat. We stopped at a simple, but clean roadside eatery, and had a wonderful lunch -- spicy bacon and peppers, potatoes with onions, tofu, soybean leaves with garlic, hot and sour soup (Pak's favorite!), scallion pancakes and stewed chicken -- everything was delicious. All six of us stuffed ourselves, and left enough on the table at the end of the meal to feed another six people. The bill was less than $30.

I could spend half a day raving about the food at lunch, and spend the rest complaining about the nauseating slop we were served at the tourist trap Joe subjected us to for dinner. I could then spend at least a couple of hours describing last night's "if-I-hadn't-seen-it-I-wouldn't-have-believed-it" Chinese acrobat show. But alas, I'm out of time. Today we're going to take a rickshaw tour through an old "hutong," and tonight we're going out for Peking Duck. Tomorrow, we leave for Guilin.

More details and more pictures will surely follow.