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Published: September 8th 2011
As it turns out, strangely enough, my days off here are exactly the same days off that i had back at home. Around the world mondays and tuedays seem to be the days that i was given to relax and enjoy the world. This last "weekend" i decided it was about time i did some adventuring around china and booked a ticket to see the great wall. The place i picked was Shan Hai guan, a place best known for where the wall meets the sea. I had seen this on the TV show ''An idiot abroad"where carl goes to china. I had a desire to walk in this awkward man's footsteps.
I got the first ticket i could get which was a "hard sleeper'' train there, at midnight, and a ''hard seat'' train back and 10 pm tueday, costing me about 200 yuan (40 something canadian). Each way would take 8 hours getting me there at 8 in the morning on monday and getting me home at 6 in the morning wensday just before classes.
Strolling into the train station turned out to be the first experience in itself. It is not uncommon to be stared at in Changchun. Yes there are foriegners here but their ain't a hell of alot of them, so you get use to people looking you up and down or stealing a quick picture. The train station was no different. As i walked in people smiled and waved and gawked. I decided to take a quick leak before i boarded the train and slipped into the bathroom. As i began pee i notice the man beside me wasn't peeing at all. As i looked over i noticed he wasn't even looking at my face but somewhere a bit south. I turned my head and coughed and he looked up and gave me a thumbs up, obviously approving of my penis. It was a strange beginning.
The "hard sleeper"train was awesome. You are stacked three high in small compartments but the slow rocking and sounds of the tracks clipping along slowly put you to sleep. The snoring and coughing and general chinese smells are simply a part of a great experience that makes you feel as if you are truely a traveler. During the night i woke up and slipped to the section where the two cars are joined and had a smoke. I watched as the lights of the chinese countryside zipped and slipped past. All i could do was smile.
Shan hai guan is at the end of the line and i woke up relaxed and rested ready for a day of exploration. I had decided that my first step would be to find a hotel and then find something to eat. Sadly i can't read chinese and it was difficult to find out what was a hotel and what was any other store. Shan hai guan is not a large city on any scale, so your options are limited in the first place. After much searching in what turned out to be a ghosttown/postapocaliptic/nice little city i found the ''friendly corporate hotel'' which i recommend to any traveler in this part of the world. It was friendly and cheap and the rooms were more then adequate (its name even has "friendly"in it). I then walked into the local market and bought some fried chicken and some kebabs from the stalls that littered the area. Shan hai guan is definitely off the beaten path when it comes to foriegners. I saw one other white person in the whole two days i was there but, for the first time, i felt i was actually in china by myself with no crutch of a company or fellow teachers to guide me.
I soon decided it was time to see some wall and decided to follow in ''an idiot abroads'' footsteps and go to where the wall meets the sea. I hailed a taxi, pointed to the name of the destination in chinese, printed on a piece of paper, and was off. A ten minute ride had me dropped off infront of a gate that told me it was 100yuan to enter though i could see no wall. Instinct told me something was wrong and i decided to explore the area. At this time of the year there are not many tourist, chinese or foriegn, checking out the wall so you are pleasently left to yourself....sadly you also loose the ability to follow people who look like they know where they are going. I finaly found 2 chinese men wearing red cowboy hats and knew i had hit pay dirt and followed them till they walked to a gate that boasted 50yuan entry. The area of the wall is called 'The dragon head' and it was absolutely beautiful. I had this idea that there would be garbage and crowds everywhere but i turned out to be very few people and a peacful beach on a sunny day. I waded into the water and loitered around the families enjoying the day as the waves crashed against the wall.
Next i hopped into a taxi and pointed at my next desitination: Jiao shan. A part of the wall in the north of shan hai guan that travelled high into a set of mountains called ''the five buddhas''. You have two choices with this section of the wall. A long trek up and a long one down or a chair lift up and a long trek down, I chose the latter. The chair lift looked safe enough from a distance as most things do in china but once I quickly jumped onto it and were swinging not so high above the rocks and tree of the montains i began to get worried. it creaked and moaned and i began to wonder why i was the only one using the chairlift. It slowly creaked its way to the top of one of the buddhas and i jumped off the lift and took a look around. The quiet and view from the high places in china are always amazing. You see the change of china happening before your eyes. You see the small towns of brick houses huddling far off in the countryside and the industral city crowding the horizon. The rivers look untouched and the ocean is full of tankers and oil rigs. Its like some sort of visual contradiction. As i began to walk down the wall the day began to catch up with me and i decided to make my way back to the hotel. I got some dinner at the hotels restuarant, explored the town a bit more then hit the hay.
The next day i checked out a temple called Meng Jiangnv Temple which paid tribute to a couple that fell in love during the construction of the wall. Deep down i love shitty tourist attractions and this one is one of the best. The plaster statues, that are missing limbs and in much need of a paint job, slowly dipict the story of Meng, a girl who fell in love with a man who ran away from working on the wall. As you trek through the gardens that look like they came out of a movie set, you read horribly translated signs describing how their love grew then died as the government found her lover and sent him to the wall to die. Still, somehow, she travelled through trails and tribulations, monsters and bandits, to see her lover one last time and finaly marry the Emporer himself. Between all these signs and statues are people trying to sell you unrelated knick nacks and stalls of carnival games. The knick nacks got boring but the carnival games turned out to be quite entertaining breaks from the intense emotion trails of Meng and her love. At one point there was a camel you could take pictures with and a complete section of mini taracotta (dont think i spelled that right) warriors. Apart from all this there actually was a temple section that was quite peacful and religious but it paled in comparison to the entertainment that was the garden of meng.
As i exited the temple i realized i had been its only visitor and that in being its only visitor had not made sure there was a taxi to bring me back or to my next destination. I looked around and low and behold saw two men. One, quite heavy set, who owned a tuktuk (motorcycle with a box to sit in on the back) and a old man who looked like he had been hit in the face with a shovel several times, that owned a reliant robin (a three wheel car know for its ability to tip over at any turn). I aproached the heavy set man first. I told him i wanted to go back to my hotel which was about 20yuan away. He shook his head and said "no, 60" which is a ridiculous price. I tried to haggle. He looked around and mimed out what i took as 'what else ya ganna do, im your only option''. Luckley shovel face stood up and made me a deal. 30yuan to a part of the wall where no one was and 60 back to my hotel at the end of day. Sold! He ended up being a really cool guy despite the dangerous car and fucked up face. I lit his cigareetes as he drove and he turned on bob marley music as we bounced through the chinese country side. I kep trying to tell him that everything i saw was beautiful and after much charades i think he got it and he gave a big smile and long speachs pointing at mountains and rivers and different trees in the region. I understood none of it but truely enjoyed the lesson.
We soon arrived at Jiumenkou section of the great wall which is the only point of the great wall that spans a river. Surprising the great wall doesnt cross any other rivers, aperantly, because the chinese felt rivers themselves where a natural defence. As we pulled up i was one of maybe 5 other visitor there and the only foriegner. The wall was beautiful and i walked it for a several hours and checked out a local bird sanctuary just for kicks. When i returned to the parking lot i was confronted by tons of old chinese wemon trying to sell me fruit for crazy prices (about 1 dollar candian an apple). My shovel faced taxi driver, i think, saw this and went to one of the vendors, bought a whole bunch of fruit at local prices (about 10 cents a apple) and gave them to me with a big smile as i got back into the taxi making sure i gave him no money for the snack. I think from that point on we became friends. We listened to music, tried to comunicate about different things (mostly women) and he ended up just driving me around the countryside and showing me different roads and people working so that i could see the area. By the time i got back to town it was well over the amount of driving we had agreed upon but he would only let me give him 10yuan more then agreed price. He also gave me his number and mimed out that if i ever came back that he would be my driver, no problem.
I left my driver with a smile and a wave and decided to wait out the last couple hours i had left until my train was set to leave.
THE ''HARD SEAT'' TRAIN
The hard seat ticket was a choice i made because there was no other option. Either i went to shan hai guan on the sleeper there and never came back or i would come back on this hard seat train. People had warned me that it was hard and that 8 hours would a hellish time but i didn't believe them. How bad could it be?
Imagine hell. That is the hard seat train.
The seats were created with someone who had a deformed pregnant womens stomach in mind. 'They are round in the wrong places, hard and to short and disturbingly angled. There are seats for three but only room for two. The leg room is just the perfect amount that you can't stretch though it gives you the illusion that you can. The table in the middle is just high enough so if you rest your head on it you cant feel comfotable. I thought i had luckily snagged the window seat but soon realized that through seat design and strangley angled window edging that leaning against the side was more painful then leaning back. I fucking hate hard seat trains.
After 8 hours the train pulled into the station, without a wink of sleep and six chinese people staring at me with the same strange awe they had the whole trip. It was six in the morning and i had classes in two hours to teach. It was going to be a rough day...and it was.
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Jess
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Josh, I absolutely love reading your travel blogs! You should be a writer! I am so happy your trip is going so well and you are enjoying the beauty of the earth that few get to see. I hope to read more of your trip soon! Hope you are doing wonderful! Jess <3