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Published: October 4th 2008
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After just under a month of teaching, I found myself on a week of holiday time. A small group of us ventured by plane first to Beijing for 3 days and then on to X'ian for another 3.
Visiting Beijing on my own terms was much nicer than the whirlwind tour I took 4.5 years ago. I actually got a sense of the city. On the first day, we went to the Forbidden City and T'ianamen Square again, but while everyone else went to the Temple of Heaven I went through one of Beijing's Hutongs (the walled-off sections of housing that range from rubble to small but clean accommodations). The alleys are narrow and winding, some with little gardens bearing squash and cucumbers or flowers. I spent about an hour just wandering. It was nice to move away from the noise of the city--behind the walls there are only bikes and foot traffic and the occassional old-fashioned, three-wheeled vehicle on the wider alleys. It is so quiet you can hear the birds fly from the trees. I took a lot of photos before finally returning to the noise and crowds.
We went to the Simatai section of the Great
Wall the second day. My first time at the wall in 2004 was to a touristy section that you drive up to, climb on, then leave. Simatai is further out of the city (3 hours) and harder to access even once you arrive. To get to the base of the wall you have to take a cable car and a crazy train that runs up and down the mountain and shoots you backwards. From the top of the train you have to hike to the base. Being incredibly afraid of heights this was a wee bit of a challenge for me, but once on the wall, I forced myself to climb to the highest accessible point. We then climbed in the opposite direction, heading down a sloping mountain and came to a fork in the road where I had the choice of hiking back for four hours and missing my chance to go back with our hired driver or any form of transportation) or ziplining a few hundred feet off the wall. Every ounce of my body wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and teleport away from these two hideous options, but, naturally, I chose the zipline--nothing but
Metaphors?
I found this exactly as is in one of the alleys in the Hutong. a loop of fabric around your waist and legs and clipped only to a hook and suspended--hundreds of feet above a dam--to slide towards doom (or the other side, depending on how you look at it). Shaking like a madwoman, I accepted my fate and managed to relax once I got used to the sensation and even watch the wall slipping away into the distance until it was hidden by the hills in the foreground. Once my knees stopped wobbling, we had to take a boat across the lower part of the dam to the place where we started and our private driver drove us the 3 hours back. I slept well that night.
X'ian was terribly crowded and polluted. You could see the pollution in front of your hands and feel it in your lungs. It makes Dalian pale in comparison. We spent a day in the Muslim quarter of the city (probably one of the more touristy areas) shopping at pretty reasonable prices (though we still were paying premiums for being foreigners, I'm sure), and the next day were off to the Terracotta Warriors. We left early (thankfully) and beat the crowds, which, by the time we
returned on the city bus, were snaked approximately6 blocks, no exaggeration. We spent the rest of the day exploring the artisan areas of the city.
When we left yesterday, the hostel clerks wanted our picture to use on their next flyer--we felt rather special. I'll post the flyer once we are sent e-copies of it. It was a good way to end the trip. The airport made me thankful to be going home, though--along with the ridiculous crowds, as I was about to board my plane I realized I had forgotten my new sweater and new makeup at security. I raced down the stairs and spent a few minutes trying to explain my plight to an agent who wanted me to wait in line to go through security all over again, but finally figured it out and sent me on my way. I ran up the stairs so fast that on the top step I fell flat on my face, bruising my cheek, elbow, knee, and ego. When I looked up a group of men was staring at me and one took my picture. I probably did look pretty funny, to be fair.
So, now I'm back in
Jinshitan, with everything I bought and all the pictures I took and trying to make it feel a little more like home. I opened the door and three centipedes, an albino pill-bug and a strange long-legged spider greeted me. One centipede is still trying to make me feel welcome by hiding behind the bed.
School starts again on Monday so I have a lot of work to plough through and a lot of preparation and planning to do....hopefully I can stop procrastinating long enough to do it! It's going to be a long haul until our holiday in January.
Until next time....
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Anne
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Thanks for the videos - I can almost smell it...