That's a Pretty Rad Wall!

(Sorry I didn't put this up sooner; last time I tried to put in too many pictures and it freaked out on me again...)
 

 

Well, we've finally settled into Beijing enough to want to look around some more! Today we went over to the Great Wall of China, which was tied with the Terra Cotta warriors in the list of Things To See In China. Oh, and the Forbidden City. As far as I know, those are kind of the only sightseeing spots. Um.

 

We got a list of some good English-speaking drivers from a Trusted Source (shifty eyes), so Mom easily secured one to take us out for the day. We went and saw the Great Wall, did some Mulan reenactments (next time I'll remember to bring a grappling hook), and then on the way back we stopped by the "Red Snail Temple". I think it was Buddhist.

 

Anyway, it was an hour and a half drive to Mutianyu, which was where we went up. Badaling was technically closer, but because it was a Saturday, it also would have been super crowded. But it really wasn't too bad (as far as crowding goes) at Mutianyu. It was a really nice day, though a little warm. They stuck you on a chairlift to go up and had a wicked toboggan ride on the way down. I took some video, took like a billion pictures, and Ellyn and I said the following lines several times:

 

"The Emperor will stop you!"

"Stop me? He invited me. By building his wall, he challenged my strength. Well, I'm here to play his game…"

 

"Now all of China knows you're here!"

"Perfect."

 

That second one is right after Shan Yu burned that guy's flag.

 

Wow. That guy probably died.

 

Anyway, those were the only Great Wall of China quotes we knew.

 

The hiking wasn't too bad because we didn't go very far, but… man. I do NOT envy the warriors who had to guard the Great Wall! That thing can get steep, mane. And they were wearing full armor. Though according to Mulan, the Ancient Chinese Boot Camp was pretty solid. So they were probably fine. Probably.

 

Um… there's not a whole lot I could say about the Great Wall that would be interesting. We found out a couple of facts. The signal fires that were put up on the watch-towers were fueled by wolf dung (this is trufax), which would burn better than any kind of wood and certainly wouldn't be blown out by the wind at any given moment. The wall is 8,800 km long, and every meter represents someone who died while building it.

 

I think the saddest part about the second fact is that a lot of the wall is being destroyed today. It's like we're not giving them proper respect by watching over it.

 

The other stop was on the way to Beijing from Mutianyu. The "Red Snail Temple" was seriously beautiful. I could almost see the airbender-esque monks running around the grounds and chanting and lighting incense or whatever it was they did. Of course, most of the explanatory signs were in Chinese and the English ones were full of typos. So it was a bit hard to understand what you were supposed to do. There were a lot of people lighting incense and bowing to the Buddha Guy (which is why I think it's Buddhist). Farther into the temple grounds was the bottom of a staircase, and when we walked back out to the parking lot we could see a temple or something on top of the mountain. I didn't climb all the steps so I'm not completely sure, but I think it was a Kung Fu Panda staircase. 8)

 

Anyway, we drove back and the driver dropped us off at a seriously good Chinese restaurant so we could eat with some of our relatives-- my dad's brother-in-law's family, who just happen to also live in Beijing. Once again, the food was fantastic.

 

Yep! That was our Great Wall Trip. Battled Huns, rode toboggans, watched people light incense, and ate food. And we got home safely.

 

Until next time,

 

Sarah

Our View of Beijing

I tried to put up some of the photos from the first day, but it was too big to send... so I just wanted to put up the view from our apartment window to see if at least one picture will work. I took a superfluous amount of photos at the Great Wall, but I might just have to limit myself to one for now. :/
 
That was a somewhat cloudy morning, I think, so the pollution only looks SLIGHTLY worse than it actually is. It's pretty bad, though. It hasn't bothered me a whole lot thus far because Seattle is so often overcast, but we've found that it gets pretty hot and humid here in Beijing. It can also rain pretty hard, which Ellyn and I found out the hard way. :)
 
Also in this picture you can see an intersection. I should take a picture of an intersection that's right in the middle of the city, because it's just ASTOUNDING how skilled these drivers are at not hitting each other/pedestrians. And the pedestrians kind of just walk nonchalantly across the street. Whenever they want to. For cars, red lights are pretty much optional though they are often acknowledged for a little while. If no one's coming, or if they won't hit you if you go, it's totally your turn. It's pretty cool/exciting/dangerous.
 
Okay, gotta type up the Great Wall stuff.
 
Zai jian (bye)
 
Sarah

China: Day 1

 

Well, I didn't want to update anything until I had something else to talk about besides plane rides and taxis and our super nice apartment. So technically I'm into Day 2 right now. Oh well. :)

 

The plane ride was really not too bad! United States time, we were flying through the night, but China time we were flying through the day, so we arrived in Beijing Monday evening even though we left Sunday night and the flight was 11 hours. I've decided not to think about it too hard. I stayed up practically the whole time as per my Quest to Defeat Jetlag Before It Defeats Me. Everyone else in the family got a few hours sleep, though, so after a night at our apartment they were all up at like 4 and made enough of a racket that I was up by 5:45. No one had fallen asleep on the taxi from the airport, though it wasn't a very long ride. That seems lucky. Probably the most exciting part of Monday evening for me was when we were going through the Passport Check. They had a little screen that gave you instructions in English, and after the woman handed me my passport back, I said "xie xie" (thank you) and she said "bu ke qi" (you're welcome). That totally got me excited-- WE WERE COMMUNICATING.

 

We spent most of the morning hanging around and exploring the apartment. It is SUPER nice. Thanks, Microsoft. They have a really great exercise room (though sadly no pool) a few floors down which I'll definitely be using every day for the next two weeks-- maybe even twice a day if we're not doing anything else. 

 

Out the window you can see a couple of tall buildings that are close by, but as they grow more distant they're completely obscured by smog. Besides being kinda gross, it makes it hard to figure out exactly how big Beijing is. But judging by the maps we have, pretty darn big.

 

After exercising and calling a few people on Skype, we decided to go out for lunch, as we really didn't have any food (besides some instant oatmeal). Up until that point, we hadn't stepped outside of the little safe bubble our apartment provided, and to venture into the unknown was super intimidating. We quickly discovered that the only rule Chinese pedestrians live by is Don't Get Hit. Although a little scary, I think I kind of like that little freedom of crossing the street wherever and whenever you want to. We had talked to one of the hotel people who spoke English, and he told us about a good market down the street where we could get food and phones and possibly bikes. We went down that way and found a fun little market, but figured we should probably eat lunch before we got a bunch of groceries.

 

Easier said than done, as it turns out. There were a couple of little noodle shops, but Mom wasn't mentally prepared to eat at one of those, so it took a little while to find a better sit-down restaurant. The food, once we managed to order it, was SUPER good. What the heck have we been eating back in the States? No one at the restaurant spoke a lick of English, but with our handy dandy Berlitz phrase book we were able to get everything paid for properly and boxed.

 

Then we hit the little market and Dad negotiated cell phones while Me, Mom, and Ellyn perused the food choices and got some stuff. It ended up that Dad didn't have enough cash to get the phones, so we got to wait around while he hunted down an ATM.

 

One of the things I feel like I've heard about traveling to asian-type countries is that people will stare at you-- especially if you're a white girl. I was pleased to find that no one looked twice at me, though that could be because they were all looking at Daniel in his stroller. I should explain for anyone who doesn't know our family. Daniel is my little brother, and he is the cutest three-year old with bright blue eyes and a winning smile. He also has Down Syndrome, which makes him pretty scrawny and a little asian-looking.  He was being SUPER good out on the street. He didn't insist on getting out and walking around and didn't give his Monster Yell. He should definitely get some sort of medal. Anyway, as we were waiting for Dad to come back with the cash a couple of the store workers were talking to us-- mostly to him. Didn't make a lot of difference as they only spoke Chinese and we only speak English. But Daniel's somehow gotten good at saying "Ni hao" (hello), so he said that a few dozen times and the ladies were charmed. Man, that kid is cute. I think it must be a cultural thing to appreciate little kids; he was getting a lot of smiles and pats on the head and stuff. Small Children are the Universal Ice-Breakers, and Daniel is one of the best.

 

So far the most frustrating thing hasn't been trying to communicate-- you can get your point across by pointing to things and holding up fingers and stuff. What's been especially hard is being illiterate. Sometimes I'll see a couple of characters that I know-- "Bei Jing", "Beautiful", "Small", etc. But those really don't give me any context and certainly don't help us find a restaurant. Man I wanna learn to read.

 

After lugging our groceries back home, everyone was pretty jetlagged, so we all took naps. Unfortunately, I slept for three hours. Despite my long nap, I fell asleep at 9:15. It's 4:15 am right now and I'm suddenly wide awake. Argh. Guess I'll have to try harder to limit myself to an hour nap or something and slowly work my way to the right hours.

 

I think this experience in China is gonna be a good one. It'll definitely improve once we all learn some Mandarin, but even without that it's super cool to be here.

 

Until later,

 

Sarah

 

P.S. I didn't have my camera with me for most of the day, but I know Ellyn and Mom took a bunch of pictures. I'll be posting that next. :)

Official Date Changes!

So, because of some Visa delays, we will now be leaving for China on Sunday evening (August 21). My peeps will be flying back November 18, and I'll be flying back January 28.

Basically all this means is that we'll be going to church on Sunday and we'll be like, "So you know how everyone thought last week was our last time at church before China? .... Yeah..." I'm not to torn up about leaving a day later. Gives me more time to finish the Percy Jackson series (again) so I won't have to lug them to China. Speaking of books, we all got nooks! At first I thought it was kind of cool that "nook" and "book" rhymed, but now it's kind of annoying when you unintentionally rhyme those words more than once. :/ We downloaded a whole bunch of free books on them-- basically nothing that was published before 1960. Thrilling stuff. It'll give us some reading material when we're sitting on long train rides and... eating noodles and... watching old guys practice tai chi in the park... etc.

Man, I'm getting excited! (--insert typical phrase here-- selections: "I can't believe we're almost leaving!"; "It's hard to visualize what it'll be like."; "I wonder how many hot asian guys I'll meet?"; "Do you think in my kung fu training I'll learn to run on top of a crowd by stepping on people's heads?"; "I'm also kinda hungry.")

Anyway, my Project Before I Leave has been cleaning out my room because it is assumed that I'll be disembarking for college fairly soon after I come back and They'll want to use my room as a guest room. I had no idea that I had that many clothes.

Okay... well... there's not much more to say. Five months suddenly sounds like a really long time to be learning Kung Fu. But there's no turning back now!

Wish me luck,

Sarah