As Scarlett O’Hara once said, “With God as my witness I’ll never be cold in Beijing again!” Following this as my creed I wore three layers rather than typical two layers – long undies and jeans and sweater with two long sleeve cotton tees just wasn’t cutting it. So today I wore two pairs of socks – one of them wool, long underwear, my flannel pajama bottoms and jeans (please remember this when viewing all photos, thanks) along with a camisole, two layers of long underwear (one of them Greg’s) and a sweater, scarf and my cute but lamely unwarm hat. And so the weather was less windy, so all was good. I even unzipped my jacket for a brief moment.
Today we are heroes for climbing the Great Wall of China says Chairman Mao. Of course, you can get this official certificate at the very first stop on the Wall, which seems overly democratic of him, because you can go much further to five towers beyond and more. Climbing the Wall is much like climbing Mt. Everest in that there are long lines with crowded sections (hereto referred to as the Hilary Step) of folks just sitting down in the middle of climbing to the flat sections. I advise looking down at your feet at all times so that you a) don’t fall to a brutal and painful death and b) so you don’t see how much further excruciating pain awaits you and awaits you. We were given a choice to go to the more popular Great Wall site with a lovely tram to the top or to the less populated site that is much steeper but less busy. My sister warned me about the first choice, that it was akin to Gatlinburg i.e. very touristy, crowded and cheesy, so we went with the second site. Of course, on this particular day most folks went to the same place: the “less populated” site with a steep climb. My lungs expanded to new capacity filled with smoggy Beijing air congestion to last me the next two years.
Many tourists from all over the world were there – Russians, Americans, Indians, Australians and well as many Chinese. The easiest to tell apart – all Russian men smoked on the way up and down the world’s steepest steps and the women wear fur coats, big sunglasses and high heels. Boots of course, but with heels and darned if they didn’t go almost to the top in those things. If that were me, my funeral ceremony would already have happened. We got up to about the fourth or fifth tower but like David Brashears always says about Everest you don’t just need to be able to go up to the top, you have to get back down to the bottom. Greg could have gone all day, seriously.
By the way, Chinese are very similar to Americans in that the opportunity is always available to make a buck. So on the way to the Wall, we stopped at a jade factory that happens to sell lots of jade items that are very pretty, high quality and important for you to buy. We were followed around and around quite oppressively. Finally I could not take it anymore and made for the “factory” exit with our guide and driver trailing behind. Never mind as we had more opportunity to spend throughout the day. The “how to make” part lasts about 5 minutes and the opportunity to shop part is open ended until you buy something and they’ve got all day. By the way, now you know that your Christmas present will likely be nothing of jade.
We also went to the Ming tomb where the guy who is buried there isn’t really buried anymore ‘cause the Communists liberated his body from the coffin and gave the loot surrounding him to the People, or so we are told. Mainly what we saw was a reproduction.
I’m trying to be funny of course but we really did have a great day, if not overly long. They seem to like to keep us as occupied as possible, hopefully spending money, until we beg and plead for rest. We’ve tried to beg out of a tour tomorrow morning of the Emperor’s summer palace before our noon flight to Nanjing – and got a room call at night from the front desk asking why and offering to work with us to fit in an abbreviated tour. We haven’t had a chance to be nervous about the baby as we literally have had no down time. But tomorrow we leave for Nanjing and we cannot wait! Just one more day before we get to have our little emperor.
No new news on the paperwork in Guangzhou. Hope that we have internet in our room in Nanjing (we don’t here in Beijing), as we hope to provide many more pics of little Timmie.
Today we are heroes for climbing the Great Wall of China says Chairman Mao. Of course, you can get this official certificate at the very first stop on the Wall, which seems overly democratic of him, because you can go much further to five towers beyond and more. Climbing the Wall is much like climbing Mt. Everest in that there are long lines with crowded sections (hereto referred to as the Hilary Step) of folks just sitting down in the middle of climbing to the flat sections. I advise looking down at your feet at all times so that you a) don’t fall to a brutal and painful death and b) so you don’t see how much further excruciating pain awaits you and awaits you. We were given a choice to go to the more popular Great Wall site with a lovely tram to the top or to the less populated site that is much steeper but less busy. My sister warned me about the first choice, that it was akin to Gatlinburg i.e. very touristy, crowded and cheesy, so we went with the second site. Of course, on this particular day most folks went to the same place: the “less populated” site with a steep climb. My lungs expanded to new capacity filled with smoggy Beijing air congestion to last me the next two years.
Many tourists from all over the world were there – Russians, Americans, Indians, Australians and well as many Chinese. The easiest to tell apart – all Russian men smoked on the way up and down the world’s steepest steps and the women wear fur coats, big sunglasses and high heels. Boots of course, but with heels and darned if they didn’t go almost to the top in those things. If that were me, my funeral ceremony would already have happened. We got up to about the fourth or fifth tower but like David Brashears always says about Everest you don’t just need to be able to go up to the top, you have to get back down to the bottom. Greg could have gone all day, seriously.
By the way, Chinese are very similar to Americans in that the opportunity is always available to make a buck. So on the way to the Wall, we stopped at a jade factory that happens to sell lots of jade items that are very pretty, high quality and important for you to buy. We were followed around and around quite oppressively. Finally I could not take it anymore and made for the “factory” exit with our guide and driver trailing behind. Never mind as we had more opportunity to spend throughout the day. The “how to make” part lasts about 5 minutes and the opportunity to shop part is open ended until you buy something and they’ve got all day. By the way, now you know that your Christmas present will likely be nothing of jade.
We also went to the Ming tomb where the guy who is buried there isn’t really buried anymore ‘cause the Communists liberated his body from the coffin and gave the loot surrounding him to the People, or so we are told. Mainly what we saw was a reproduction.
I’m trying to be funny of course but we really did have a great day, if not overly long. They seem to like to keep us as occupied as possible, hopefully spending money, until we beg and plead for rest. We’ve tried to beg out of a tour tomorrow morning of the Emperor’s summer palace before our noon flight to Nanjing – and got a room call at night from the front desk asking why and offering to work with us to fit in an abbreviated tour. We haven’t had a chance to be nervous about the baby as we literally have had no down time. But tomorrow we leave for Nanjing and we cannot wait! Just one more day before we get to have our little emperor.
No new news on the paperwork in Guangzhou. Hope that we have internet in our room in Nanjing (we don’t here in Beijing), as we hope to provide many more pics of little Timmie.
2 comments:
So did you go to BaDaLing or MuTian? I feel bad that I factored into your decision; maybe you should have gone to Gatlinburg. Riding down the tram sounds pretty fun; they didn't have it back then.
Are you staying at the White Swan in GuangZhou? You will definitely have internet.
Love the commentary! You are hilarious!
We love you!
great account. I can picture the Russians now.
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