Mind the Hilly Road

Yeah, so rather than another long post you probably don't have time to read, I figured I'd keep it shorter and write about just a few days. Lots of exciting stuff to see! And lots of exciting menus to read. And the pictures are:

1. Sign seen in many places at the Summer Palace, it's very hilly there
2. Tower of Buddhist Incense at the Summer Palace
3. One of the many decorated ceilings at the Summer Palace
4. Dancers on the Great Stage at the Summer Palace
5. Me on the Great Wall
6. The path I walked all the way up to the top
7. From the menu at the Hutong restaurant
8. We ordered the first dumpling listed, can you tell what it's made out of?
9. An item at the dumpling place we thought it was wise to stay away from

Day 8:

On Monday, we went to the Summer Palace, which is very similar in look to the Forbidden City, but more spaced out and with fewer tourists since National Week is over. I think we were there for about five hours, walking up lots of steps to nowhere, and seeing beautiful Chinese buildings. There is a little shopping street on a section of the river on the grounds of the Summer Palace, and one of the booths had a man playing various Chinese flutes and other instruments. We stopped over, and he let us try the instruments, and I played a pretty mean Frere Jacques. I ended up purchasing a beautiful little instrument that translates to Oriental Magic Flute (how appropriate for a Queen of the Night!). It looks like a small tear-shaped vase, and sounds like a low pan flute. It will be beautiful to display, and something I can’t really get anywhere else.

Day 9:

I had  no one around in the morning to do anything with on Tuesday, so I explored a bit on my own. I went to the ultra-touristy Silk Market, a huge six-story building with hundreds of vendors trying to sell you knock-off clothes, silk scarves, tablecloths, chopsticks, freshwater pearls, everything you can imagine. When you walk down an aisle, the vendors grab at your clothing trying to get you to look at their wares. As you walk away, the prices shouted at you get lower and lower. The whole experience has a bit of a dizzying effect on you.

After I got back, I met up with a friend, and we got lunch in the Hutongs where we had been before. We also did some shopping at a handmade pottery store, where the items are made out of purple clay, a type of clay only found in southern China. We both bought a number of items, they were very inexpensive and absolutely beautifully made and colored.

Day 10:

Today was the big day – the Berlin Wall and Grant’s Tomb. I mean, the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs. We went to the Badaling (not Badabing, but it helps me remember the name) section of the Great Wall, which could also be called the Great Wall of a Thousand Steps and Steep Slopes. This is the major tourist section. You start at a low point in the middle, and can either go left or right up the wall. We went left, because it looked like there were fewer tourists going left. Probably because the left side was the extra steep side. We went as far as we could go, and despite having to pull ourselves up via the handrail at times, and climbing hundreds of stairs, it was an unbelievable experience. We ended up having time to walk halfway up the right side, also, but were happy to let our uncontrollably shaking legs rest on the bus afterwards.

The Ming Tombs were another story. Talk about boring and waste of time. We were given two hours until we had to go on the bus again, and basically, there’s one building. You walk down to the depths, look at the 13 tombs of the Emperors and Empresses of the Ming Dynasty, and walk back up and wonder what you’re going to do for the next hour and a half. So we sat on cute little stone elephants and waited for the clock to move.

Once home, and starving, I went back to the dumpling place I had been earlier in my trip with a friend, and ordered six different types of dumplings I hadn’t tried before. All delicious. 36 dumplings plus tea cost 46 yuan, or about six dollars. And that includes the price of looking at the funniest menu we’ve come to so far. We actually ordered a dumpling, and had no clue what some of the ingredients were because the Engrish was so bad. Tasted good though!

So the amusing part of my day was that I had heard that there weren't any bathrooms with toilets at the Great Wall, so I tried to not drink much water so I could avoid standing over a hole in the ground. After climbing for almost two hours, I figured I’d at least look at the bathroom, and it turned out there was a whole row of stalls with toilets. Well, after I got home, I drank a ton of water to make up for earlier, and after our first round of dumplings, I really had to use the bathroom, which of course ended up being a hole in the ground. D’oh! I’m going to try to avoid those for the next few days, but I sure was kicking myself for not drinking more water while up on the Wall!

On tap for my last two days: Temple of Heaven, Lama Temple, Confucius Temple, $5 massage, maybe the Beijing Zoo if I can talk anyone into it, but probably not.