China (Part II).

Beijing - Day 2

We were planning on going to the Great Wall this day, but that ended up not happening. Apparently you had to book a tour gorup at least a day in advance, and frankly we weren't prepared to go as independent tourists. So we ended up heading over to The Summer Palace.

The Summer Palace isn't much of "palace" as it is a huge garden-like park. The scope is certainly mind-boggling, as the entire garden is practically man-made, including the Kunming Lake that, along with the other smaller lakes, covers 3/4 of the park with water. When else besides the ages of emperors past would such a materialistic feat requiring so much time and manpower be possible? But even with enough manpower, the excavated dirt had to go somewhere so it was used to make a 60m-high hill along the bank. Not ambitious at all, nope.

Due to constant nagging from my sister, the first thing we did was circling pretty much the entire lake in a paddle boat. You might think that's a nice way to take in the scenery, but believe me it wasn't quite that enjoyable. We were paddling constantly for an hour under the August noon sun, going at a snail's pace, and viewing scenery that wasn't meant to be enjoyed from the water surface.

Next we went to the Tower of Buddhist Incense.



I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but this building is by far the highest building in The Summer Palace. It just so happens to sit nearly at the top of that 60m hill I mentioned earlier, called Longevity Hill. This was my first taste of climbing long flights of stairs since coming back to China and would like to say that after climbing 215 steps up (yes, I counted) and another 215 on the way down my legs felt like lead. Am I out of shape? No, that can't be it...I blame the 1 hour of paddle-boating I did earlier.



Gate at the summit of Longevity Hill.

Lesson #3 - To impress people, have really really long flights of stairs. 100+ steps per flight is great!

After climbing down, we climbed up another portion of the hill to a pavilion, but by this point something unexpected started to happen: I was becoming more and more out of breath. After the second climb, I was literally unable to breath without having a serious coughing fit. Over-exertion? Hyperventilation because of the heat? Dehydration? Or was I just really unfit? I was sure it wasn't any of those. It's not that I'm conceited about my body's limits, but in the past my body has proved to be unusually resilient. (How normal is it to spend entire days intensively hiking in Colorado and Utah without needing to drink any water?)

Anyways, I later found out that it was all due to the terrible air quality in Beijing. Apparently, I'm terribly sensitive to aerosols, and had developed a slight asthma condition or perhaps was just allergic to something in the air.

So I managed to single-handedly put a damper on our outing. To give time for my respiratory system to calm down, we took a ferry to the opposite side of the lake to walk along the West Causeway.



It's a marble boat!



Tower of Buddhist Incense from the lake.



The West Causeway is a string of narrow man-made (surprise!) strips of land that runs through the western portion of the lake connected by a series of 6 bridges, each built in a different style: the Lake-Dividing Bridge, the Bridge of Pastoral Poems, the Jade Belt Bridge, the Mirror Bridge, the Silk Bridge, and the Willow Bridge. Between the Silk Bridge and the Willow Bridge is the Pavilion of Bright Scenery. The picture above is of the Mirror Bridge and below the Jade Belt Bridge.



Man, this causeway was too long (I think over a mile). Don't get me wrong, the scenery along the way was great, but I probably could have enjoyed it more if I wasn't trying so hard to breath. By the time we left, I could only breath through small gasps that inhaled as much air as when one sniffs through their nose smelling something.

Well the reason I said that air quality was to blame is because it didn't change anything whether I was resting or exerting myself; no improvement during the taxi ride back. But after returning to the hotel and taking a shower, my condition immediately got better.

Needless to say though, I didn't want to go outside again that night so we ate in one of the hotel restaurants (there were actually 3 high class restaurants available). The entree: black mountain sheep - it was good. Dinner wasn't as expensive as I thought it would be since it was a hotel restaurant, but it wasn't that cheap either. Just over $300 for two people (my mom and sister were too tired for dinner and went straight to bed). And we even got a voucher for a $45 coupon (next meal). Funny how it works though. You only get the coupon and discount if you go to the restaurant once beforehand and then go again, otherwise you get nothing. Never seen a restaurant give this kind of offer back in the states.

Lesson #4 - This is kind of out of the blue, but our hotel was near an office building which was in view during dinner. My dad noticed how even on skyscrapers many windows of a Chinese office building were opened. We remarked how Chinese people seem to like to keep windows open even when the air quality is so bad while back home no one keeps windows open even though air quality is good.

Beijing - Day 3

Well we had a choice of two tour groups to the Great Wall: an English one and a Chinese one. We made a bad choice and picked the Chinese one. This should have been obvious, but we didn't bother to think about it at the time; the hotel we stayed at is inhabited by mostly foreigners, so if we chose to join the Chinese tour group, we were bound to spend a good chunk of the morning going to several different hotels to pick up Chinese tourists. And a good chunk we did spend, mostly getting stuck in Beijing-level morning traffic. Just awful.

Before going to the Great Wall, we headed over to the Ming Tombs. Not much can really be said about it except that it's a tomb for dead guys who happen to be of royalty. The perimeter buildings were all built using an interlocking-beam structures like the Temple of Heaven but on a huge scale. The wooden posts were the size of huge tree trunks already so they really must have had to find some huge trees.

To get to the gate guarding the Ming Tombs, you're suppose to enter through a preliminary Yin-Yang Gate (because you're "entering the world of the dead") and then have to do a special 3-part ritual when you leave (so the spirits don't haunt you): stomp your feet, leave stepping with your left foot if male and right foot if female, and shout "wo hui lai le" (meaning "I have returned"). I don't know if the tour guide was making this up, but everyone there was doing this, and it was pretty amusing to hear so many people shout "I have returned" over and over.

I also learned there that there are trees with "immortal" leaves, which are planted all over the place. The leaves which are the size of a big palm don't fall off when they die, and only fall off when new leaves have grown to replace them. Hence this type of tree is never bare.

I thought we would go to the Great Wall afterward, but no, being in a tour group is not so nice. We were first taken to what is said to be a high-class health clinic to get a "free" checkup. Well technically we didn't have to pay anything, but it was probably included in the cost of the day's tour. And so because my dad happens to have chronic headaches he got one. Nothing wrong up to this point, but when he started taking out a credit card, we knew something was amiss. Apparently he was cajoled into buying some medications, but the thing is, he had to use a credit card. Meaning we did not have enough money on hand to pay for them......And if you're still wondering, yes we were scammed. >_> Once back on the tour bus, we saw another guy who got a checkup carry the same medication for a different diagnosis. And after close inspection, we realized the labels don't even say that they treat said condition, rater "body aches, stress, etc." - basically the most generic ailments ever. But man we were scammed well; I have never seen such an elaborate scam before (or maybe I've never seen a real scam). The building was on the scale of a small hospital and not in a shady place at all, there was a sizable staff, and the practitioners seemed to have legitimate credentials. I don't know how profitable their scam is, but they must certainly use some of the income to fund such a set up.

And afterward we were yet again taken to another diversion - a jade carving factory and store. No doubt another scam too because the prices were outrageous. But they insisted it was because they were high grade jade. I highly doubted that; what legitimate jewelery store has its own factory to create them?

So these two detours really annoyed us to hell. Personally, I didn't mind too much the attempts at scamming us themselves - that's unavoidable when going sightseeing almost anywhere. However, don't take so much time away from seeing places we actually want to go to!

Finally after a tasteless lunch, we drove to the Great Wall. We took the cable car up to the 6th tower from the base because our tour guide said our entire group must go up the same way and that not everyone can climb to the top from the bottom. Ugh...that's no fun, but might as well since the scam detours only left us with 2 hours for the Great Wall. >:O

When we got off we see...



...a huge ton of people. Damn, this is what happens when you make it too easy to get to the top (7th tower which is the one up there in the picture). That climb did not even take 5 minutes and was completely unsatisfactory with the jostling crowd around. So what did we do with an hour and a half left? We descended from the top down the other side where climbability was noticeably harder.

View past the summit. The farthest we went was that distant tower-fortress.



Basically, the designers of Great Wall felt no need to cut in stairs when the slope is less than 45 degrees. Who needs them...even in modern sneakers we only need to tightly grasp the artificial handrails to avoid slipping down the smooth stone floor...(Well I guess it's a different matter if you want to get down as fast as possible in case of a raid, but still...)

And then when you're not carefully getting down/going up an incline, you're faced with this...



It's a LOT steeper than the camera makes it appear. See that guy in the middle? He's showing us how one step is almost half your leg. Got to love these 60+ degree climbs.

So if anything, the Great Wall was breathtaking...in the most literal sense possible. I basically walked 3 miles round trip but it was dead tiring. I don't think any hiking trails I've been on requires one to put so much effort into every step, whether it's a steep climb or a cautious sliding descent along a slope. Plus the Beijing air didn't help, but it was better at the high altitude (though people with altitude sickness might disagree). For armor-clad warriors to have run along the endless miles of the Wall in the past, the Great Wall is truly a testament to the might of ancient people. If an ordinary sentry then can run from tower to tower without tiring, then how strong must heroic generals have been?

Fancy the heroes of the Three Kingdoms, anyone?