Entries about great

Monday, time for the reason most people come to China: Great Wall! Our tour even included breakfast, if we could find Saga hostel again. It had been tricky enough yesterday, but we had it in memory now. We were the first ones there and ordered two American breakfasts. Despite that fact, our food came absolutely last and was a bit cold. We broke down and bought drinks that they failed to include in the 'complimentary but not really you paid for it in the tour price' breakfast.

Our minivan of tourists drove ten minutes to reach a larger bus full of even more tourists. Unlike what we'd encountered in most of China, the bus was full of nearly forty foreigners. 'The most whities we've seen since leaving Canada,' Ryan proclaimed. Our guide found the number of people quite large as well.

He gave us some background on the wall itself which spanned from the sea, past mountains and to the desert. Emperor Qin Shi Huan had decided
that they needed a wall to keep the Mongol invaders from pillaging villages. People today recognized his role in unifying China which was a collection of smaller locally governed communities prior to his rule. He unified the people with language and religion. He built the Great Wall to have a physical barrier and keep out the Mongols. But during his era, people were more likely to think of him as a tyrant who enslaved millions, a sizable chunk of the large population, and ran up large expenses building the wall and an elaborate tomb. People at the time had very few provisions as a result.

Once we arrived at the wall, we opted to pay to take the cable car up as we only had three hours and wanted to make the most of them. Since it was early, the wall wasn't busy at all and the only line came from our busload. We got on our gondola with one other traveller. Mountains rose all around us and the Great Wall soon came into view. We were really there!

Starting at watchtower 13, we began our journey. The temperature was rather pleasant and the skies were a perfect blue, nearly Asian-Pacific Economic Conference (APEC) blue like when the government shut down factories and closed everything when the Western leaders held the conference in Beijing earlier that month. If the trees leaves weren't dead the pictures would have been even more phenomenal.

The wall was narrower than we imagined, smaller than a lane of traffic. New bricks had been laid to make walking easier. Eventually, the photogenic winding wall became an uphill challenge. A woman along the way had forgotten water. We would have shared if we weren't running on a low supply ourselves.

We passed the 'No tourists' sign as our guide had instructed. The woman selling snacks there didn't say anything either. There was another vendor past that point anyway so the sign was more of an 'at your own risk thing'. That's what travel insurance is for, just kidding.

The bricks' placement became sporadic with some sideways, others missing and other parts reclaimed by vegetation. It got easier to walk on soon after and there were always people in front of us which had to be a good sign. We kept walking just past the halfway point time-wise. After a few more pictures, we ventured back.

We met an American man on the way who was teaching ESL an hour South of Beijing. Monday and Tuesday were his weekend so he was just visiting. He had wanted to teach abroad elsewhere but got quite a few offers from China after uploading his resume. He worked with quite a few Canadians too, mainly from the Maritimes. We ended up chatting about travelling and working abroad the rest of the way back. We made much better time than anticipated.

Ryan and I explored the other side of the wall on our own, not ready to leave just yet. The wall kept winding and winding. Off in the distance, we could see small watchtowers. It felt like we were in Middle Earth or something like that. The walls themselves had interesting drainage systems running down the sides too.

Even though the walls were quite high, in the past the Mongols had been able to scale the walls, but getting back with the goods they'd pillaged from the villages was much more challenging, so it served as a deterrent. Guards in the watchtowers also kept the country safe.
China's flaw with the wall had been spreading themselves too thin and not providing supplies to their guards. The Mongol leader, Genghis Khan, bribed the cold, hungry guards, overtook the wall and became the emperor of China.

Nearly lunch hour, we rode the gondola down and walked to Mr. Yang's restaurant. We joined a table of ten or so other tourists from our bus and waited for plate after plate of food to be placed on the table. There were at least a dozen different dishes and I could even eat half of them. The highlight for me was the spicy cabbage and greens. I hadn't eaten this well with Chinese food in awhile.

It was nice to actually have a ride back to my friend's neighbourhood, although the walk back from Saga was brutally cold. Ryan and I ventured back to the dumpling place for supper with the translation and Chinese characters for eggplant saved on his phone. We couldn't find the dish in the English menu so we asked for the Chinese. They were quite surprised. We managed to order what we wanted and while it wasn't exactly the same as the dish we had on our first day, it was still delicious and meat-free. The Chinese couple next to us ordered the same thing afterward.