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Published: July 11th 2011
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The most striking thing when you emerge from the subway after fifty minutes or so of travelling underground from Tiananmen East station to the Olympic Stadium is not the light - like when people react like vampires as they walk out of the cinema in the daytime - it's not the stadium itself, or even the huge Olympic complex around it; it's the smog. The view of the stadium was so obscured that even when we were only 100 metres or so away from it, it was just a hazy outline, almost like someone had started a massive fire infront of it and we were looking through the smoke - which, coincidentally, was exactly how we ended up watching the fireworks in Roundhay Park a few years ago, thanks to poor positioning on our part and presumably one of us having upset Aeolus somewhere along the line.
As you might expect, the smog covered everything, from the IBM Flame building to the Olympic Park to the swimming pool complex - which is basically just a giant version of the Blockbusters board - and while it was all still very impressive and all, you did feel like you were missing out
on something. We were told that being in Beijing with it's air quality is like smoking seventy a day, and while I know from experience in Xiangyang that some days visibility is better than others, seeing it as starkly as this not only made this statistic very believable, but it also made my throat hurt a lot.
Now, I am no particular fan of the Olympics, but I do love a good stadium. I also have fairly distinct ideas about what I like a stadium to be; compact with intimate seating and a feeling of being close to or even on top of the pitch from anywhere in the ground, a proud but understated exterior, and most importantly, the ability for someone to be in the next street yet still unaware that it's even there. The Bird's Nest Stadium ticked precisely none of these boxes, but it was still an amazing thing to see. The outside, once you get close enough to counteract the effect of the smog, was simply breathtaking and as impressive as any modern building that I've had the privilege to visit. The inside, although it is always a strange sensation to be in a massive
arena when it's almost entirely empty, was modern, spacious, accessible, and overwhelming when you're standing in the middle of it.
I say "when you're standing in the middle of it", because for about twenty minutes, I was. Well, not standing exactly, more like ambling around it on a segway, but the effect is the same I think.
Last summer they had a kind of mini-Olympics thing set up in there where you did various events and at the end were given a card with all your heights, distances and times on it, but speaking as someone who almost fainted after finishing a ten kilometre hike along the Great Wall the day before (more on that in a minute), a segway suited me down to the ground. I've never seen one in England and all I knew about them was that they move based on the direction that you move or lean, they are supposedly nigh on impossible to fall off - which gave me a nervous first few laps trying not to undermine my confidently orated fact - and they look incredibly fun. It cost 150 Yuan (about fifteen quid) for twenty minutes, which was almost as much
as the hostel we stayed in for three nights and more than I spend in a week here in Xiangyang, but it was still money well spent as far as I'm concerned. Honestly, if ever get the chance, even if it's not in an Olympic Stadium, you really do have to try it. The course was marked out by little traffic cones and compromised two long straight bits - up and down the 100 metres track - and a tighter, turny bit. And so for twenty minutes I was having the time of my life, overtaking people up the inside, running wide to get the best angle into the next corner and glancing the cones on the way out, just to show the crowd how hard I was pushing. All of this while commentating internally on myself like I was Olivier Panis winning in Monaco, like I say if you get the chance to do it, you'll never feel more alive.
All of which, leaves us with a mere four hundred words or so to talk about the Great Wall - one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of mankind. The truth is though, there isn't actually that
much to say about it. Obviously, it's a must see if you're around Beijing, obviously the the photos that you've seen (mine included) don't even come close to doing it justice and obviously you can't really see it from space - really, just think about it, it's a wall - but short of just talking about the history of it and while I am a geek for that kind of stuff, wikipedia is far better at it than me, or enthusing about amazing it was to see it, there's not a lot more you can say really. What I would say, is that we were lucky enough to be on a tour that took us to a non-touristy section and that is something I would definitely recommend. Largely because, to me, it was one of those amazingly moving sights that is best appreciated quietly. From the part we visited you could see nothing but hills and and the wall itself, and hear nothing but the the birds and the insects, and as we all know, if you have thousands of people there, this simply won't be the case both for practical reasons, and because certain nationalities (mentioning no names) have
voices that tend to carry and ruin any hope of quietly appreciating something brilliant. Where we were we only saw one other group for the whole day, and that was five old Chinese people who looked knackered before they'd even got up the hill - unlike me of course, a fit and healthy twenty seven year old, who made it all the way up the hill and halfway to the first tower (about five hundred metres) before downing a bottle of water and sitting down for ten minutes lest I was violently sick all over ancient Chinese civilisation's greatest achievement.
Of the six towers that we made it to, the first three were restored, as was the wall itself, with railings and repaved steps making it nice and safe for the most part. After that, however, it hadn't been touched for about five hundred years and the steps were literally crumbling beneath our feet. One thing that you don't see from the photos is just how steep it is. At times, particularly on the unrestored part, you're not walking as much as climbing up it and my robust upper body strength was called upon more than a few times
to help me up onto the next step. In the end, with several stops we made it along six towers of the wall (about five kilometres) and then, with slightly fewer stops, we made it back again, although another, slightly longer, sit down was needed then, because there is no doubt I'd have fainted before I made it back onto the bus. To be honest, I don't care about the hills or the steepness, next time I'm taking a segway.
Pura Vida
Dave
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