China 2008: Day 3: The Great Wall
Breakfast was a place across the street from the hotel-- cheap and awesome, unlike the hotel buffet (pricey and mediocre).
Much like the DMZ, the Great Wall is actually much closer to the city than it looks on a map. A stop by a jade factory on the way (ugh) where we heard more of the Chinese-standard English they're evidently teaching in schools today, then we arrived at the touristy Badaling section of the Great Wall.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, maybe a guided tour of the various spots on the wall? Instead, the description stopped as soon as we got on the Great Wall itself, and our tour guide joined the rest of the tour guides at wherever all the guides hang out, telling us to come back within 90 minutes. WTF?
The section we were sightseeing was pretty steep, with some amazing views and extremely high steps, and cold weather or not, it's definitely not something I would care to do three times a week as a tour guide... but it was very short. We made it to the highest section of the Great Wall in the area, stopping for plenty of pictures on the way, and back down within 90 minutes, which tells me it really wasn't all that long of a walk. We seriously could have used another two or three hours there, rather than dorking around inside pearl factories and whatnot in the morning.
The scale of the Great Wall is truly immense. Guardtowers every few hundred meters or less, most of which looked big enough to permanently accommodate a few guards, and while some sections were long and narrow, parts were wide enough to walk three, four, or more abreast. And it's steep. A trail running roughly parallel to the section of Great Wall we took was switchbacking every fifty feet or so, the whole way up-- it looked like a complete bastard. And the ancient Chinese built 6,700km (4,100 miles+) of wall over this kind of terrain... the scale, like many of the things in China, is simply immense. Despite what seemed like a late 10:30am arrival at the Great Wall, it looks like we were pretty early-- we ran into some other American tourists at the top, but surprisingly few others. The crowds looked liked they had only recently arrived as we were leaving at noon, and it looked like many of the tourists out braving the (it was relatively warm day, almost 40F) "cold" ignored how steep the wall really was. Other friends reported more than a few female tourists wearing heels while trying to go up the wall... crazy. o_0
Lunch was at a copper factory (yes, this does not bode well). The detail done there looked amazing, as it was all by hand, with seemingly little to go on besides the eyes of the workers. Lunch itself wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. We had a tiny shot of Chinese rice liquor there (104 proof?)-- ewwwww. Burns! It burns! Some other tourists next to us said they loved the stuff. Crazy.
Afterwards we checked out the nearby Ming-era tombs, but those got the short tour, too. Instead of checking out both the burial mound and the pathway of stone advisors and animals, we just did the burial mound. It wasn't like we were pressed for time, either. WTF. Fortunately this was the last day of the tour, so we didn't suffer beyond this. The next stop was the "Bird's Nest", which sounded cool. Then we pulled over on a freeway access road, and were told to climb up to the edge of the freeway to see the new Olympic Stadium, which looked like a Bird's Nest. We didn't even go on to the stadium grounds. What. The. Hell.
Quick stop by a tea house next, which was actually vaguely decent, then our tour guide continued to try to sell us on a kung fu show which was an extra charge (errrrr, NO), then they moved dinner up from 6pm to 5pm because we were already done with the schedule. Disappointing. Dinner was even worse. It was restaurant packed with locals, seemed crowded, then we got this. They looked and tasted just like McDonald's old school dark-meat original chicken McNuggets. Suffice it to say, we were pissed.
