23 June 2007

“Cultural Enrichment” Day One: The Great Wall

I know what I expected the Simatai Great Wall (司马台大量长城, Simatai Daliang Changcheng) to be like. The “Great” in its name sounded like an easy tourist trap—that, coupled with the wall’s iconic status as China’s national symbol, made me assume that the Wall was over-hyped. I expected to arrive by bus at a hot, dirty field, climb up a concrete monstrosity reminiscent of Harvard’s Mather House, sweat through crowds of other easily-fooled tourists like me, take a few pictures, and come home. Sure, I was excited, but I was almost upset at myself for being so, thinking, “God, Justine, The Great Wall? when did you become so cheesy?”

It wasn’t like that at all.

Our bus wound up a mountain road, every scene out of our window looking like a National Geographic centerfold. Outside of one village, a husband and wife leaned on their hoes in a small field of what looked like cabbage. In another, a man waded through knee-deep, muddy water with a net—his son looking on from the riverbank. Some of the villages that we passed through were well developed (I saw a school, pigs, goats, and chickens)—but most of them were not. Quite different than Boston or Davis.

When we arrived at “the Great Wall,” the first thing that struck me was that, well, I couldn’t see it out of our bus window. But then we got off of the bus, and could see the mountain above us and, perched on its ridge, the Wall.

I loved the poor English of the ticket office’s signs: “Beautiful Environment Comes From Your Care and Cherish,” “No Naked Flames,” 什么的。

I didn’t expect that today I would get to walk around in a scene that looked like a stereotypical Chinese brush-painting with its high crags, misty clouds, weeping-willow like trees. I didn’t expect that today I would get to hike a well-groomed, high-mountain path. (The wall itself is architecturally impressive—it’s perched on the top of a ridge that I wouldn’t want to walk up too often, much less carry enough bricks up to build a Great Wall.) I didn’t expect the only tourists who would be there were others, like us, who were willing to sweat up many, many flights’ worth of stairs.

Dad, I do not recommend that you go to this section of the Wall. It was Robert-Sawyer steep; it reminded me a lot of Half Dome’s quarter dome. The wall’s stairs varied in width and in steepness… at times, the steps were knee-high, and at other times, the wall was flat. We hiked for a good hour and forty-five minutes (and passed 11 watch towers, 楼 , or lou) before reaching the end of the trail.

Along the wall, there were vendors selling Coke （可口可乐, kekoukele）, popsicles, and souvenirs. The vendors will follow you for hours along the quite arduous wall-top trail, hoping to sell you a 20 kuai (6-7 US dollar) t-shirt. Everything is overpriced, but by overpriced I mean popsicles and postcards cost 1 US dollar instead of 20 US cents. (Much to our teachers’ dismay, we bought them anyway.)

Coming down seemed a lot steeper than going up, but had the same breathtaking view. My words of the day are cable car (lunche)—there for those with injuries, like our classmate TianShui, who yesterday sprained his ankle but still chose to come hike—and “use a camera to take a picture” (yong xiangji pai zhaopian). As an added bonus, on the way down we discovered the “Flying Fox,” a sketchy-looking zipline that you could take across a river and down the mountainside. As I hooked myself into the harness and jumped off the platform I glanced back at the rusty wheel that turned the zipline’s cable, which was a bad idea but for that it added a little extra rush to the already thrilling ride down. (This zipline would not have passed US safety standards!)

Everyone slept on the bus ride home; after a full day of hiking and ziplining, who wouldn’t? But I’m left with the impression that, OK, the Wall earned its name. It’s well-built, graceful-looking, and useful. If I were Chinese, I would be proud to have it as a national icon.