Si Ma Tai
"He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man."
Mao would have been proud. I clambered and huffed my way up the wall in flipflops all the while cursing myself for not taking the cable car. The rocks are sharp and the ascend steep. Simatai is 110 km north of Beijing and the spot I chose to have my Great Wall experience. It's stunning, exhilarating and raw. Up here they built obstacle walls, walls-within-walls, to defend against troops that had already scaled the Great Wall. Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut, confirmed in 2003 what many had suspected all along. He was not able to see the Great Wall from space. Now the Chinese government has to re-edit all their textbooks. I suppose the West should do the same.
There were more then a few moments of complete solitude to be had atop the watchtowers. It was great to look up toward the next watchtower along the wall and not see a soul. Even better to turn around and see the wall snake its way across the jagged hills into the smog and not hear anyone...except for the guy that somehow got an icebox up here and was trying to sell me a cold beer. Okay, so he wasn't trying. He actually sold me a cold beer but I deserved it for nearly spraining my ankle whilst gasping for air on the way up. People appeared in little clusters but then dissapeared within a few seconds.
One short cable car ride down and I was surrounded by minibus drivers. The prices to catch a ride back into Beijing were horrendous and I started walking along the highway. Met some really nice locals along the way and eventually the driver that had been shouting prices at us (I convinced six other people to walk away and try to hitch a ride further down the road) lowered the fare. Then, for the next two hours, I listened to the British girls discussing their absolute desire to eat testicles for dinner....
Lucky me, I got to meet a kid that looked like a young Bruce Lee over dinner. He was adorable and had some serious muscle definition going on. Pedro and Alfonso tried to convince him to go to Portugal to open a martial arts school. I had several types of meat on a stick. No testicles for me.
Mao would have been proud. I clambered and huffed my way up the wall in flipflops all the while cursing myself for not taking the cable car. The rocks are sharp and the ascend steep. Simatai is 110 km north of Beijing and the spot I chose to have my Great Wall experience. It's stunning, exhilarating and raw. Up here they built obstacle walls, walls-within-walls, to defend against troops that had already scaled the Great Wall. Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut, confirmed in 2003 what many had suspected all along. He was not able to see the Great Wall from space. Now the Chinese government has to re-edit all their textbooks. I suppose the West should do the same.
There were more then a few moments of complete solitude to be had atop the watchtowers. It was great to look up toward the next watchtower along the wall and not see a soul. Even better to turn around and see the wall snake its way across the jagged hills into the smog and not hear anyone...except for the guy that somehow got an icebox up here and was trying to sell me a cold beer. Okay, so he wasn't trying. He actually sold me a cold beer but I deserved it for nearly spraining my ankle whilst gasping for air on the way up. People appeared in little clusters but then dissapeared within a few seconds.
One short cable car ride down and I was surrounded by minibus drivers. The prices to catch a ride back into Beijing were horrendous and I started walking along the highway. Met some really nice locals along the way and eventually the driver that had been shouting prices at us (I convinced six other people to walk away and try to hitch a ride further down the road) lowered the fare. Then, for the next two hours, I listened to the British girls discussing their absolute desire to eat testicles for dinner....
Lucky me, I got to meet a kid that looked like a young Bruce Lee over dinner. He was adorable and had some serious muscle definition going on. Pedro and Alfonso tried to convince him to go to Portugal to open a martial arts school. I had several types of meat on a stick. No testicles for me.
posted by LOTC at 2:12 AM
1 Comments:
Seriously Gina, no testicles for you? I thought you were braver than that.
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