Climbing the Great Wall

In the process of looking for the bus to Simatai (the part of the Great Wall that we went to), we sort of incidentally ended up hiring a car of our own. These things happen. As a result, 7 am on Wednesday found us in a little mianbaoche (lit. bread car, because they are rather loaf-shaped), freezing our toes off in the insufficient heat and eating 24-hour-convenience-store breakfast (glutinous rice dumplings and red-bean Bimbo bread...say that phrase 5 times fast!).

By the time that we got to the Wall, I could still see that I had toes, but darned if I could feel them. However, there is nothing like climbing the Great Wall of China to put the feeling back into your toes! A lot of people who haven't been to the Wall (like my mom, before this trip) have the impression that it's a kind of place that you go up and just walk around on the top for a while. This is particularly untrue at Simatai, where the word of the day is "stairs." You climb up to arrive at the Wall, then you climb up to the top of the wall, and then from there it is just more and more stairs and slopes, up and up and up.

As we were working our way up to the wall, we came upon a group of Chinese people who looked like they were waiting for something. When we came through, they started talking to us a bit, and I could tell that they wanted to sell us things. However, none of them pushed the issue too much; they just walked with us and talked about other things. In the end, the little posse of Chinese ladies that we acquired climbed every inch of the Wall with us. They told us little tidbits of trivia, pointed out good spots to take pictures, and at particularly tricky parts they would hold our hands and urge us to be careful. When we split up (the moms wanted to go back down, the rest of us wanted to climb to the end), the ladies split up too. My mother, who is not particularly fond of heights, had a little Chinese lady holding her hand the whole way down, while I had another chatting with me the whole way up to the last tower. We had a really awesome faux pas moment when she asked me how long I was going to work in China. "Oh, no," I said. "Actually, I work in Tai-" I cut myself off when I realized that she knew full well that I lived in Taiwan. Everyone knows it's part of China! I apologized a little, but she just laughed.

Of course there is a price to pay for this extended hand-holding service and general companionship. Our mothers went through it first: the ladies stopped them before they got off the Wall and started trying to sell them picture books. This was fine, because the moms didn't have any money. "Talk to the men," they said. When the rest of us got to the bottom, we were swamped with little ladies trying to sell their books. "Your wife said you should buy one," they told my dad, and "make your father buy a book" to me. In the end, we caved and got one. There was a big guilt factor.

While my mom waited at the bottom with Gered's mom and had her picture taken by curious Chinese people, the four of us took a slightly ghetto but pretty fun zipline down. One long, slowpokey lunch later, we were back in our mianbaoche for the 3-hour ride back. We all kind of crashed when we got back to the hotel, but roused ourselves briefly later for a dinner of different kinds of food-on-a-stick. Weirdest one: teeny grilled bananas.

Coming up next: the Summer Palace, plus some intense shopping, China style. Give me a little time, though; the parents are still here and I am busy entertaining them (or something).