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Published: October 26th 2009
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Before returning to the States for the summer my friends and I took a trip up north to Beijing. Normally, members of the CTLC have nearly three weeks of training in Beijing during which time new teachers can explore and see the sights. My group last year got the shaft due to the Olympics. Instead of three fun filled weeks in Beijing, we got ten mediocre days in the small coastal city of Zhuhai.
So on June 14th my friends, Kim and Cara, and I boarded a train, excited to finally see what had been denied us nearly a year before. The train from Shenzhen to Beijing took around 24 hours. We were able to book the three of us in a soft sleeper, which means we had comfortable beds in a room with a door. The soft sleepers have two bunkbeds and the fourth in our room was taken by a Chinese man so displeased at having to share with three foreigners that he spent four hours in the hallway playing video games on his PSP. Eventually he climbed up to his bunk, and then didn’t budge for the following 17 hours.
For the bulk of the trip
we slept, dozed, and napped. I had never taken a train before. I thought somehow it would be more fun than a plane ride. It was more comfortable but just as boring. We arrived in Beijing in the evening on Monday. We immediately went to the booking office to book our tickets back to Shenzhen. In China one cannot book train tickets far in advance and usually they must be booked at the point of departure. All of our resources told us there would be English speaking help at the Beijing train station but they all must have been out that day. After failing to purchase tickets we found a taxi to take us to our hostel.
The hostel was great. There was a small comfortable lounge, free use of the internet, clean rooms, and friendly English speaking staff. There was only one problem. We couldn’t stay there. They had grossly overbooked their rooms and they put us at a subpar hotel just a block away. The hotel was dirty. Our room was on the fourth floor. The toilets were on our floor and they were disgusting squatters. The only showers were on the first floor. No elevators. The
Kim, Cara, and I
We hiked all the way to the tower that is hidden behind the red lantern. pillows were tiny buckwheat bags that felt like sacks of cement. The hostel assured us it would only be for two of our five nights.
Early the next morning we emerged from our rat’s nest of a hotel and walked down to the hostel to meet up with other guests for a trip to the MuTianYu section of the Great Wall. Yeah! The weather was blessedly cool, and though the skies threatened to open up my spirits were not dampened. The Wall was around an hour’s drive away by van and we chatted with the other guests along the way. We met a British couple that had spent the last four months teaching English in Kunming and we compared notes about our students and our cities.
By the time we arrived it was indeed beginning to sprinkle. Visibility was low and we were all keeping our fingers crossed that there would be no lightening. None of us had any desire to actually climb to the height of the wall so we purchased tickets for the ski lift up and the toboggan slide down. That’s right. Toboggan slide!
Okay, so maybe the toboggan slide was a little touristy
Lovely View
or would have been without the clouds... and cheesy considering the importance of the structure we were visiting, like jumping in a castle bounce outside of Buckingham Palace, but who cares! What’s the harm in ending a trip to the Great Wall with a whoosh down an unmaintained uninspected slide? I rode the ski lift up with a Spanish woman who was visiting a friend in China. She was very nice but spoke little English. Imagine that in this day and age one can still find a European that doesn’t speak English well. I didn’t hold it against her. 😉
Walking along the wall was quite an exercise. Literally. It’s not so much a wall as a really tall series of stairs. The MuTianYu section of the Wall has impressive towers built during the Ming Dynasty. We started at one and climbed through four more before turning around and climbing back. To say that the stairs were steep would be an understatement. Climbing up was physically trying. Climbing down was emotionally exhausting, especially when it began to rain in earnest and the threat of slipping became a real concern. I was, am, and continue to be terrified of requiring a stay at a Chinese hospital. Our
trip back became rather harried when flashes of light appeared with greater and greater frequency in the sky.
At last we arrived back at our starting point without injury only to suffer the greatest disappointment: the rain had shut down the much anticipated toboggan ride. *sigh* We had to ride the ski lift back down. Oh well, maybe next time. Our trip to the Wall included lunch. But before we could eat there was the obligatory walk through the souvenir market. I’ve been through souvenir markets in several countries. The number one spot for creepiest and scariest is still held by Jamaica. But the market at the Great Wall is firmly seated at number two. I wanted to buy a t-shirt for my dad, so I was casually checking out the selection when I became ensnared by an older woman with talons like an eagle. She grabbed me by the arm and drug me into her booth. I figured while I was there I might was well see what she had. I chose a shirt and asked her how much it was. She didn’t speak a lick of English so the entire exchange that follows was in Chinese. “This
shirt is normally 248 RMB ($37) but I can sell it to you for 148 RMB ($22).” “Uh, no thanks. That’s way too expensive.” “Wait! 100 RMB!” At this point I removed her talons from my arm and left her booth. She followed. I walked faster. So did she. “80 RMB! 60 RMB! 50 RMB! 40 RMB! Okay! 20 RMB!”, she screamed at the top of her lungs. I stopped. Three dollars for a souvenir t-shirt isn’t too bad and I didn’t want her following me all the way back to Beijing so I bought it. After I escaped with my life and a reasonably priced shirt, we all walked to a restaurant nearby where we were treated to a very good meal.
The ride back to the hostel was long and uneventful. We were all pooped from the climbing and what not, so we kept it low key for the evening.
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