Beijing

Five Nights in Bangkok

The Great Walls : 31 March 2004

We've been there and back again. And there and back again, again... Or something like that... Our first trip to the Great Wall was with a small tour group. We hooked up with three other people, who thankfully all spoke English reasonably well, and headed towards the wall. The first stop, however, was actually at the government owned Jade Factory. We got a brief tour, some information about types of jade and a look at the carving, and then were left in the store to browse through the $10,000 bracelets with all the other tourists. There was probably 1 sales person for every 3 toursists, and there were a lot of tourists. Imagine 6 or 7 of those big tour buses parked out front. Finally, we made our way to the Great Wall. The section we were at was a pass, the last pass, actually, between any invading forces and the unprotected plain of the capital. It was currently being invaded by about 5 large busloads of tourists. This section is a circle, and in the old days, the commander lived in the center. Now, there's a freeway through it. We took the left path from the parking lot because it was nearly empty. The right path led to a much steeper climb, and probably a better view, but there were simply too many people there. The actual climb we took wasn't too hard, and was pretty cool. The wall itself is very well restored, and the hand-rails that they added helped a lot with the steep parts. The day was a little hazy, though, so the view was less impressive than it could have been. All in all, not bad, though. Except that we only had an hour and a half to do our climb before we had to get back on the little bus. Next stop was lunch. But it wasn't just lunch, it was another government factory/store. This time it was the enamel factory, where they make those beautiful vases and dishes. This was actually a fascinating thing to see, because the process is so amazingly tedious. It takes a single worker about 2 weeks to do a vase that's only 8 inches tall. Then there was the giant store. I thought this was a Communist country! Lunch was in the restaurant above the store, and was actually very good. After this, it was on to the Summer Palace, another example of why "it's good to be the king," as Mel Brooks put it. It was beautiful, but a little depressing to see the squalor outside. Then, it was yet another government factory/store... actually two in a row. First, the pearl shop, then the tea shop. Both interesting, but we were definitely a little burned out by this point. The second trip was totally different. The plan was to get ourselves to the wall, rather than relying on a tour. This way, we would be on our own time schedule, and could avoid the visits to the govermnet tourist shops. We booked the car through the hotel travel desk. Though it was quite a bit more expensive than the tour, we figured it was worth it for us, especially after having spent most of the last 3 weeks in the room. So we were a little confused when we arrived at the desk in the morning to be greeted by our tour guide. Uh oh. Indeed, they had given us a car, driver and a guide. It really feels good to go first class sometimes! Anyway, they took us to another portion of the Great Wall (at Bindaling), a little further out of town. This is one of the first areas that was open to tourism, and up at the peak is an inscription by Chariman Mao himself, along with generations of Chinese tourist graffiti. You could see the wall going up and down the hills off into the distance, or at least as far as we could see on this very hazy and dusty day. Still, despite the huge effort required for climbing, it was an amazing place. Much better than the other day, we both thought. Plus, on the way back down, there were these poor black bears they had penned up. It was great fun to tease them and make them dance for apples. The poor cute beasts. We humans are really good at being cruel, aren't we? Our guide and driver had sat in the car the whole time, making it even further weird that they had provided a guide for us. But whatever. When we got back from the wall, they were hungry (we had eaten a very large breakfast in preparation), so we stopped at yet another factory/store with a restaurant, so they could eat. This time, we just sat up in the lounge and waited for them. The store itself was a combination of every factory we had seen so far, with a section with jade, a section with enamel vases, a section with pearls, a section with tea, a section with clothes, and tons of tourists. On the way back towards town, we made the decision to go to the Aircraft Museum instead of the Ming Tombs. Part of this was because Andrea had been to the Ming Tombs, and was less than impressed, and part of it is because I am a huge airplane buff. And, we didn't regret our decision at all. Actually, it was really cool, and even our guide, who had never been there, seemed to like it. We were only able to do this because we had done our own car thing. The museum is in the middle of nowhere, out around the 6th ring road around Beijing. Appearantly, it is a former air-force base of some sort, and the best part of the museum itself was in a hardened bunker under a mountain. It was filled with all sorts of Chinese air craft, mostly warplanes of various sorts. There are the World War 2 era planes, both Soviet and American, a few Japanese planes, then the Soviet jet fighters from the Korean War era, and then their Chinese versions. Outside were large numbers of jets in various states of disrepair, along with a whole bunch of larger planes, both warplanes (bombers or spy planes) and civilian transports. We barely even saw the whole helicopter section. On our way home, our guide still ended up taking us to another government factory shop. This time it was Oriental carpets. It was amazing to see the carpets being put together, one thread at a time. They told us all about the raising of the silk worms, and the harvesting of the silk. Then we saw a woman sitting there working on a rug, with sections of silk thread a few inches long. They'd do a double loop, then cut, double loop then cut, double loop then cut. Then pick up a new color and do the same thing. It takes a single worker about 6 months to complete a single rug that's about 3 by 5 feet. It's yet another example of the incredibly tedious work that they do to fill the time of the 1.3 billion people that live here. But it is also an amazing rug. Appearantly, the highest quality ones, over 800 threads per square inch, are actually fireproof because of that double weave. It keeps the air out, so it can't burn. In the Forbidden City, there are rugs that have survived fires that have burned down buildings. This is the key difference between rugs manufactured in China and those manufactured in the Near East (Turkey or Egypt or wherever they do it). The Chinese ones use the double loop, and the others a single loop, making them weaker and more vulnerable to fire. Anyway, there are the Great Wall stories. We're finally leaving China tomorrow morning. We will arrive in Bangkok by the evening, and check into our next expensive hotel. (It was supposed to be cheap, but then they doubled the price when I said there were 2 people. Go figure.) The details of what happens after that aren't worked out yet, but we'll be trying to get our visas for Vietnam and Cambodia, and then trying to live as cheaply as we can for a while to make up for how expensive Beijing ended up being. Then, we'll either be heading into India to live in boxes because we've run out of money. Wish us luck!