CHINA: Day 5

Monday May 21, 2012

Today was the day…..GREAT WALL DAY!! We met at 8:00 this morning to take our long bus ride out to the countryside.  On the way we saw lots of small, poor villages and farming areas which were really different than the big city we have been seeing.  It was beautiful though.

When we got to the town where we were going to see the Great Wall, we stopped at a place called “The Schoolhouse.”  Which was not actually a schoolhouse.  It was mostly a restaurant where the majority of the food was grown and produced right there.  They also had glassblowing demonstrations, and a little glass shop where you could buy the hand-blown glass.  Kind of random, but a really nice place.  When we got to The Schoolhouse, a cute Chinese girl took us down the road to the Barefoot Doctor’s house.  The Barefoot Doctor is kind of like the village’s medicine man (or woman).  She was this tiny old lady who didn’t speak any English, but was very sweet.  She took us into her living room and told us stories about her life and the lives of the people in the village, while the girl from the schoolhouse translated.  I’m not positive, but I think she is kind of in retirement now.   I don’t think they use Barefoot Doctors like they used to, but she still does a little bit.  One really interesting part of our talk with her was that at the very end, Joe asked her about a calendar that she had on her wall.  He asked her about it because it had a picture of Christ on it and China and Christianity just don’t go together.  She told us that she believed in Jesus and that she had for about 3 years.  We didn’t get a lot more details than that.  Afterwards, Sharlet told us that while she was telling us her story, she heard her use the Chinese word for God a couple of times.  The girl translating for us must have decided to leave that part out.  He’s just not someone that is talked about in China.  Really interesting.

After our little chat, we walked back to The Schoolhouse to have lunch.  That was definitely the best food we have had here yet.  It wasn’t really Chinese food which was a nice change.  We had salad, soup, bread, beef, chicken, pork, rice, vegetables, brownies, and cheesecake.  Okay, most of that sounds Chinese, but it wasn’t really cooked that way.  I don’t know how to explain it, but it was delicious.  Plus we got to eat with real silverware for the first time.  That was pretty fun even though my chopstick skills are definitely improving. 

After lunch we took our bus up to the Great Wall area.  The Great Wall runs along the top of a mountain, so you have to hike or take a ski lift thing up to the actual wall.  The place where we parked the bus was crazy crowded with tons and tons of vendors selling just about anything you can think of.  Sharlet told us that they tend to be pretty overpriced there, and are pretty aggressive and hard to get away from once you show interest.  So we were sure not to make eye contact with any of them as we passed. 

A few in the group chose to hike up the mountain to the wall, but most of us took the ski lift.  That was definitely the better plan because we saved our energy to hike on the actual wall, and the view from the lift was incredible!  Stepping onto the Great Wall of China was seriously the most amazing thing.  How many people can say that they have actually walked along something that incredible?  It was so surreal.  As we walked, I kept stopping and staring in awe and thinking to myself “Am I really on the Great Wall of China?”  It was the coolest thing.  It also made it a lot easier to understand what an amazing feat it was for the ancient Chinese to build the wall when I was actually standing on it.  It’s HUGE!  The whole thing is millions of stairs leading up and down from one guard tower to the next, running up and down the tops of the mountain ridges.  Each step is a little, hand-laid stone, put there long before any sort of technology was developed.  The people who built it honestly blow my mind.  It’s amazing. 

We had tons of fun being on the wall.  Climbing up and down those steps was exhausting! There were so many and some were really little and almost flat while others were huge and so steep we almost had to crawl up them.  When we made it to the end of the touristy area, we walked off the beaten path a little ways (aka we walked past the sign that said “don’t walk past here”).  Then the girls waited while the boys walked down a little farther to pee off the Great Wall (that was one of the major goals of the trip).  On our way back, we made a music video of us dancing to “Let’s Get Down to Business” from Mulan and “Call Me Maybe” (another major goal of the trip).  We choreographed the first ten seconds of Mulan and that turned out pretty cool, the rest of the time we looked ridiculous.  We also grabbed some random tourist to video tape it for us and him and all of the other people watching definitely thought we were crazy.  They were right.  Our last goal for the Great Wall was to get kissed on it.  Melissa gave Kenzy and I chocolate kisses that we ate right before we went back down.  Not quite as good as the real thing, but there weren’t too many hot tourists to pick from so we had to take what we could get.

To get down from the wall, we all took the little toboggan/slide thing, which was super fun.  Then we got back on our bus and drove back to the hostel.  When we got there, Kenzy and I weren’t very hungry so we went and got Starbucks strawberries and cream frappuccinos and McDonald’s French fries, while the rest of the group went to a Muslim restaurant down the street.  On our way back from McDonald’s, I bought a super cute purse for $7.  I am really excited about that little guy.  I love shopping in China!

The rest of the night we spent wandering in and out of shops with the boys, and playing cards in the hostel.  We even made a new friend, Jerry, who, with less than perfect English, picked up how to play Scum super quickly.

Sidenote: Chinese apparently love pulpy juice.  Every juice that I have had here so far has had pulp in it.  I don’t mind it, but it’s pretty weird when you get pulpy grape juice.  And that’s my story. 

So Exhausting!

Off the beaten path....we weren't actually supposed to walk on this part of the wall. Oops.