China, Part II - The Great Wall

Contemplating the entire semester I was going to spend on the ship, the one experience I was most looking forward to was hiking the Great Wall of China. This trip is one organized by the Institute for Shipboard Education, the "company" that operates the ship. This is separate and in partnership with the University of Virginia which operates the academic program. I signed up for this trip which was billed as a two-day hiking experience on the Wall itself and one-day tour of Beijing followed by a flight to Hong Kong to meet back up with the ship. Other trips offered a "visit" to the Wall, but this was the only one that spent extended time actually hiking and experiencing what it was like to be up on the wall for any length of time. I've seen the iconic photographs of the Wall with the sweeping majesty of the steep-sided mountains in the background and this was what I wanted to do.

The trip began with a morning bus ride to the Shanghai airport and a two-hour flight to Beijing. The Beijing airport is a model of efficiency, renovated and improved for the 2008 Olympics. We were a group of 36 students and faculty/staff and all were traveling with only a carryon, so we quickly exited the airport and got on a bus to Miyun, a city an hour and a half drive to the north. Our guide was a local man named "Raymond" (his English name) who spoke excellent English and gave us a non-stop commentary along the way. He was very upbeat, joking and laughing with the students. He had a great style and we all enjoyed him the entire time we were together.

By late afternoon, we had arrived in Miyun which was much larger than I expected. Miyun is not a tourist city. People who come to China to see the wall book day trips out of Beijing and never even pass through the city. We were the only non-Chinese we saw the entire two and a half days we were there. Signs were rarely in anything but Chinese and we spent our time pretty much at the mercy of smiling, nodding and saying Knee How (good day) and Shia shia (thank you) - the only Chinese I picked up with any hope of correct pronunciation. No, the spelling isn't correct.

We checked into a very nice hotel and had a group dinner just like the lunch I described in the last post - ten to a table and endless food. That evening we walked around town a bit, but the temperature was well below zero (around ten degrees F or so) so we didn't stop moving. We discovered the local department store/grocery called "Wu Mart" which caused many Wal Mart jokes. As we walked through the market, we got lots of stares and even points by little kids. It was pretty clear that white people don't come to town very often.

In the morning, we had a hotel breakfast and got back on the bus. It took us the better part of an hour to reach our starting point and we piled out of the bus. It was still bitter cold and some of the students were not all that pleased to be standing out in the cold waiting to start. People pretty much began to warm up as we began to walk down the broken pavement of the small town where we started. Soon we were climbing upward on a series of switchbacks which led us to the Wall.

This section of the Wall, had pretty much not seen renovation in a long time, perhaps since it had been constructed some seven hundred years ago. The walkway was crumbling, huge sections of brick completely missing and in some places we were walking on the rock the Wall was originally constructed upon. Other places showed the original construction in pretty good shape, but mostly you got the feel that you were walking on a very old structure, one that was well in place before Christopher Columbus got the crazy idea to head westward into the sunset himself. It was an amazing place to be and I was pleased to see the students appreciating the experience. The day started off cold and overcast with a bit of snow on the ground, but not enough to impede us from moving forward. Every so often, there was ice on the ground which made the footing slippery. You had to really watch your step in places as there were no handrails or other aids to navigation. You fall off the Wall, you go splat - there's no one to sue.

In places the way was pretty narrow and a couple of students had acrophobia - one so serious that she eventually after a couple of hours decided to go back down, led by one of the local guides who were accompanying us along the way. This was probably for the best as by late morning, there were several sections that were truly narrow and I doubt she would have made it. For me, I've always been an acrophile - the higher the better.

As lunchtime approached, we were urged forward by Raymond. He said that there were "burgers" waiting for us. I couldn't figure how we could actually be having hamburgers in so remote a place. I figured he meant sandwiches of some sort and was missing the translation. When we descended down to the guard tower, there were three local men with three large red coolers they had packed up from the valley floor. Inside? Boxes and boxes of MacDonald's Big Macs! They had put boiled towels inside the coolers to keep them warm and started handing them out. I haven't had a hamburger from MacDonald's since I was a little kid and here I was faced with Big Macs on the Great Wall. Well, I generally attempt to try local cuisine, and I was pretty hungry so I dug in with the hungry students and ate my lunch. I now have an answer to the question "what was the strangest food you ate on your trip around the world?".

Following lunch, we descended off the wall and traveled overland to bypass a section of the wall that was too degraded to travel upon. As we climbed back up to the ridge we could see the section we climbed trailing off into the mist. Quite the amazing sight. As we continued to hike, the weather began to improve with the clouds breaking and the sun shining through. By mid-afternoon it was still quite cold, but we had beautiful blue skies and sunshine. There was just enough snow on the ground to let you know it was wintertime - pretty much ideal hiking conditions. We continued for several hours on sections of the Wall that showed evidence of more recent repairs. We finished the day and climbed down to a small parking lot where the bus met us to drive us back to another fantastic meal and a night in the same hotel from the night before.

The following day, we reversed the direction and started from the same point we departed the day before. This section showed lots of improvements, likely done in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. The day was more beautiful than the last with brilliant blue skies and fantastic visibility. The wind had picked up a bit which made standing and admiring less fun than keep-moving-and-admiring. It was nice to contrast the renovated sections, with large guard towers and barracks with the more broken down sections from the day before. I suspect that the average tourist that gets to see the Wall only is shown the "nice" sections and doesn't realize that the 3000 plus length of the Wall isn't whole and complete. It was a privilege to see the older section - it's not something that many tourists get the chance to do.

Looking back at the Wall on Day 2 of the hike

This day's hike ended in mid-afternoon. Lunch was a bit more civilized with sandwiches and fruit carried by each hiker. Thank goodness, I don't think my digestive system could have handled another gut bomb. By 3:00, we were all back on board the bus and rolling towards Beijing. Just before dinner we were treated to a traditional Chinese tea ceremony and souvenir shopping opportunity. Kind of touristy, but the students seemed to enjoy the opportunity to spend some money. I heard one complain that she was having trouble staying within the $900 per port stop limit her parents had subjected her to. I felt bad for her - what a burden.

We stayed in a Beijing Holiday Inn on our final evening in China where we met other Semester at Sea groups on other tours. The lobby was a sea of white people making me realize that I had already changed my mental search image. For the last two days, every white face (and a few black ones) belonged to our group. I wasn't used to seeing any non-Chinese who wasn't traveling with our group. One of our guides complained about the same thing. Apparently all those white people look the same. It makes you realize that your brain takes a lot of short cuts when it gets the chance. This hotel had somewhat reliable internet although it was quite overloaded with a hundred US college students all attempting to upload pictures to Facebook at the same time.

The following morning we checked out and took our bus for a short ride to Tiananmen Square. We got dropped off at one end of the square and we walked through the bitter cold and wind out into the square. This is a place full of history and tension. We actually stood right on the place where the iconic photograph of the students facing off a Chinese tank happened. Staring up at the portrait of Mao hanging on the gate to the Forbidden Palace was an amazing experience. It was a bit too cold to stand and talk, so I'm afraid the experience may have been a bit unappreciated by many of the students. I really enjoyed seeing the place I had read so much about.

We proceeded under the busy street and walked underneath the portrait of Mao into the Forbidden Palace itself. The palace is said to have 9,999 rooms because the Emperor in Heaven has a palace of 10,000. I believe it - the place is huge. We walked the entire length of the palace, stopping occasionally to peer into display spaces and look at the interesting statuary. It was so cold that we moved fast and after an hour or so made our way back to the bus. From there we headed to the airport and the four hour flight to Hong Kong. Everything went smoothly and we were looking at the lights of Hong Kong as the bus pulled up to the ship around 8:30 that evening. The ship was literally tied alongside a mall. You had to walk through the mall past glass-fronted clothing stores and shoe shops to get to the gangway to get aboard ship. An amazing day looking back. At nine a.m. we were on the top of the Great Wall of China - less than twelve hours later we are standing on the pier looking at the Hong Kong skyline. What a world.

We were scheduled to depart Hong Kong the following afternoon, so this was our only evening in the city. I decided to walk out and take a look at the city a bit. I ended up wandering into the Night Market where pretty much every consumer item you could imagine was up for sale. In fact, all of Hong Kong seems to be a temple to buying crap you don't really need. I'm proud to say that while the cheap knock-off designer jeans and bootleg episodes of "Friends" were tempting, I didn't spend any money. I was back on board the ship by midnight, ready for our second market visit in the morning.

That visit went well. The market was pretty similar to the one we had visited in Shanghai, although more spread out. The students wandered through the crowded streets doing their assignment which involved planning a menu using the local nutritional offerings. It was an interesting exercise which required them to do more than just look at the "weird" foods, but to really think about what a local family might do to have a nutritionally-balanced diet. A challenge in many parts of the world.

We got back to the ship around 2:30 leaving me very little time to see any of Hong Kong in the daylight. I met Anne Marie, one of my traveling companions in Hawaii who was looking to take a short walk as well and we walked back through the mall and in five minutes we were at the dock for the Star Ferry. For the price of about $0.30 US, we got a trip across the harbor to stroll among the skyscrapers. The ferry gave us a nice view of the harbor and our own ship which was pretty cool. On the other side we walked around a bit and found one bank building that had an observation tower on the 76th floor. We took that opportunity and got a great view of the city and the harbor below. We could see our ship way across the harbor looking like a bathtub toy which was fun to see. We didn't have much time, so we took the express elevator back to the street and reversed our walk. We were back on board by 5:00, missing the "rush" of students who wait till the last minute to get back on board. If you are late boarding, you receive a penalty of "dock time" which is time you have to stay on board in the next port when everyone else gets to get off the ship. The penalty is something like an hour for every ten minutes late. This is a pretty effective method of having a lot of latecomers and keeping us on schedule.

We cleared out of Hong Kong customs and pulled away from the pier just as the "famous" skyscraper light show began. After Shanghai, this waterfront wasn't quite as impressive, but they do an interesting bit of coordinated lights and lasers to the time of music we couldn't hear over the ship's engines. It was fun to watch the pretty colored lights as we steamed out of the harbor, bound for Viet Nam. We have three days of classes (one has passed as I write this) before our next port call. We are steaming along under cloudy skies and relatively calm waters. Last night we were among a fleet of brightly lit fishing vessels. I imagine in this part of the world, they were fishing squid but we didn't get close enough to see. This morning I can see from my cabin window, two container ships moving opposite our course. We are likely in pretty busy waters for the immediate future. The port stops are going to be coming fast and furious in this part of the world and I'm afraid I'm not going to have time to process it all. So far it has been amazing and wonderful.

If you've read this far - thanks. I don't know how much internet connectivity we will have in Viet Nam, so don't be surprised if it's a while before I'm able to post again.