Trip to Beijing day 6 -- The Great Wall of China

Day 6  -- The Great Wall of China

I must have been excited.  I woke up at 3:30 AM instead of 5:30 AM…  We were supposed to go with Stephanie, Emil and Jesse but Stephanie was sick and Emil had seen it 3 times.  I sent Randall upstairs to preserve my feet and I bought breakfast to go.  At 5 AM the street venders were already out and I bought 5 tea eggs, 2 sets of buns and a sandwich (veggie) for Emil and Jesse.  Turns out there were only 3 of us so I had too much food.  At this early hour there were people cleaning the streets… The subway was working… I saw a couple (the girl asked for help in English) and I gave him a dirty look and he let her go.  I thought she might have been dressed a bit like a lady of the evening but I really don’t know.  Guess my dirty looks work in Chinese as well as English.  It was interesting to watch our little area of Beijing wake up… Wudaokou…

This time when we got to the train station it was easy.  We caught the 6:12 AM train to Badaling.  The train was very nice and comfortable with big windows.  The day was very hazy with pollution.  About 10 minutes into the trip we noticed that there was an eclipse.  These don’t usually sneak up on our family.  I took a picture but it didn’t come out very well.  That was an unexpected bonus.  When I started taking pictures some of our fellow travelers’ noticed and also took pictures.  We looked it up when we got home and you had a 78% eclipse back in Boise.

              After a while we left the city behind… We started to see a bit of rural Beijing.  Then after we got into the mountains we saw our first view of the Great Wall.  I am getting really angry at the Disney show Mulan.  I keep thinking of it intoned by the little dragon Mooshu “ The Great Wall of China”….  Jesse didn’t help by humming bits of the songs just to keep it in my head.  We thought about the cable cars that you could take to the top of the great wall but I decided I was going to climb up the Wall.   The Tee shirt I took the cable car to “The Great Wall of China” or I walked down “The Great Wall of China” just didn’t sound as impressive as “I climbed the Great Wall of China.  Of course the great wall is very long and we were only on a small portion of it.   It was really cool.  There are lots of pictures… We seemed to be the only westerners at this early time on the wall.   I would do 15 or 20 steps then take a break.  At one point near the end of where we went I muttered to Jesse that I passed my stress test and 2 Chinese women started laughing.  Guess they spoke English.  We saw some horses but later I realized they were used to cart up items for the repairmen.  

The wall seems daunting but it wasn’t as effective as the Emperors hoped since people could be bribed….  After a while we saw a  ride down the Wall for 30 quai each ($5)…  We ended up in a tourist trap…. They wanted to sell us pictures… Food… Souvenirs.. They even had bears that you could feed.  Jesse fed some bears for $.50.  There was one bear that beckoned to him with his paws..  Then we got confused and found the tourist buses… It was crowded, dirty and smelly.  The problem was that we were tired and we ended up walking a long way extra.  By the time we got to the station I could barely walk…   We enjoyed the last of my tea eggs and we bought potato chips… We all fell asleep on the train…  I woke up as we approached the city.  Some of the housing was very basic… Of course our housing is basic near the tracks too.   We went to a noodle stand for lunch and I went into the big Chinese grocery.  That was a bit of mistake (the grocery) because I was really wiped out.  We went back to the apartment and watched the video “The hunger games”.  We then went to a really great Chinese restaurant.  We decided to all eat vegetarian and it was wonderful!  They had chrysanthemum balls, tofu, eggplant fried noodles, eggs and tomatoes in broth and a buckwheat thimbles.  What was even more amazing is that we got all this good food and drinks for 5 people for $15.  The scary thing is that usually food prices correlates to income so there must be a lot of really poor people here.   We went back to the apartment and I was falling asleep so Jesse brought me back to the hotel.  I like to watch Chinese TV and make up the dialogue from the expressions.  I usually fall asleep quickly.  So ends day 6 of our trip to China…