The Great Wall or How I My Knees Will Go Bad By Age 30 (5-17-08)

The day today opened with rain.  I was not excited in the least about it but it did.  They had fried eggs and fried chicken at breakfast it was quite amusing.  We loaded the bus and headed to the Great Wall, which was an hour and a half to two hours away.  I saw today the China that I halfway expected to see before I got here.  There were not a lot of tall buildings.  There were farms and little shops and vendors on the streets.  I know that’s a terrible vision to have of China before you know anything about it, but hey it was my vision.  Anywho,  The Great Wall is long and up on the ridge of a mountain range.  We had to take a lift to get to the wall.  It was in pretty good condition.  You can walk 10 people shoulder to shoulder across the wall and they all will fit.  Now, how you would do that up the really steep inclines that made up the wall I do not know.  The group I was part of decided to climb to the highest point of the wall that we could get to.  I now have calves, thighs, and ankle muscles of steel.  No, really, they’re made of steel.  It climbed more stairs and up and down more 20+ degree inclines today than I can safely say I ever have before.  It was beautiful though.  Because of the rain this morning, it was misty over the mountains, which made for some gorgeous scenery.  The Wall is very impressive I enjoyed it.  I also bought some things around the vendors (all 20 million of them) at the base of the climb area.  They’re very pushy here in China about selling you stuff.  You can haggle with them for things but they’re very in your face and take it that if you are looking at their stuff you are going to buy it.  Very strange.  We took the bus back to BIPT and are now waiting for dinner.  After that we’re packing and heading to the Beijing train station for our train which is overnight to Qingdao [ching-dow].  Well, I’m gonna finish packing.  Peace.

Beijing…The Bluest Skies You’ll Ever See? (5-16-08)

False.  The past two days we have been in Beijing, it looks like a normal Westernized city with lots and lots of people.  Oh yeah, and Chinese characters all over the place.  WARNING: NEVER DRIVE IN CHINA, you will die.  The Chinese use their car horns more than any place else I’ve ever heard.  They use them to pass, to say watch out for me biker, to say don’t cross the road or I’ll eat you with my grill, all sorts of things.  Beijing is pretty normal from what I can tell other than the constant smog.  It’s trying to get prettied up for the Olympics in August, but I think they’re not going to be able to do anything about the smog.  (Unless they take a giant vacuum cleaner to it, but I don’t think they’re going to do that.)  Yesterday we didn’t really go into Beijing we arrived at the Institute of Petrochemical Technology and had lunch (all the meals by the way have been wonderful, full of vegetables and meats and breads, most really good.)  Then we collapsed in our rooms for a while, took a short tour of campus, ate dinner, and then the English majors from BIPT threw us a party where they practiced their spoken English and let us know about their culture a little bit.  Today, we went to the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square.  We saw the giant picture of Chairman Mao and the outside of his mausoleum.  Inside the City was gigantic with lots of Ornamentation and pagodas and buildings everywhere.  It was built over 4 centuries I think they said and only stopped in about 1900.  We didn’t have a tour guide and I wish that there had been more writing so that I could understand exactly what I was seeing but it was still very impressive.  Hopefully some of the pictures will load.  Interesting side notes about the day: Chinese people will take random pictures of Americans just because.  It’s really quite funny and the little Chinese children look at you like you’re a strange wild being (especially if you have a beard.)  After the Forbidden City was dinner (also good) and the concert. It went as well as it could I suppose due to the deadness of the space we were in.  And then their choir performed for us…. Let’s just say I’m glad they only had 3 songs, but they were lovely people.  Ok, I need sleep because tomorrow is the Great Wall, and then an overnight train ride to our next destination.  So yeah… that’s it.  Over and out.