Please be warned that this is the longest of the three acts. If you require a bathroom break or a drink, please take care of that now. One the act begins, there will be no stopping.
And here we go in 3...
2...
1...
*
Let's fast forward now to my final full day in China. It was a Monday, a fairly normal Monday. A curtain of smog hung over the city, though its threat level hovered only at a mild "unhealthy" rating. Certainly manageable. Nonetheless, I had no plans to bother managing it.
I had booked a ticket to the Great Wall.
It's said that when a person goes to Beijing, there are two things he must do: eat Peking Duck and see the Great Wall. I'd managed the Peking Duck the previous night and it was time to his the second item on the list. The question was, where to start?
Lucky for me, my hostel had a Great Wall tour on offer. In fact, they had two. Seeing as how I was feeling a little tight - 900 yuan in cell phone rental fees will do that to you - I opted for the cheaper one. Nonetheless, it looked pretty cool. I'd been told to avoid the tourist trap otherwise known as Badaling and this tour quite clearly went somewhere else. Good enough for me.
(For the curious, my destination to-be was Jinshanling.)
The girl behind the front desk informed me of the price and the pick-up time. 6:20 AM. My first thought: "Damn, that's early." But it was a full day at the Great Wall that I'd wanted and it was a full day that I got. This information was followed up by a reminder that it took three to four hours to drive to the Great Wall, thus the early pick-up time. We wouldn't be back until five or six in the evening.
I happily told the girl that would fine and wandered up to my room to read my book and get some early shut eye.
6:20 rolled around and with it a knock on my door.
"Coming!" I replied. The lack of response suggested I was not dealing with an English speaker. Opening the door confirmed that yes, the man outside was Chinese and spoke no English.
I raised two fingers. Two minutes and I'll be ready, I was trying to say. Sign-language was never a strong suit of mine, but he nodded and headed downstairs. I hurriedly slipped on my jacket and hat, swung my bag around my shoulder, and headed out the door. No time to shave, but that was okay; I could think of no particular need to make myself presentable.
When I arrived downstairs, I noted a distinct lack of people. There was only myself, the desk girl, and the Chinese man who was, I presumed, my guide. Perhaps everyone else was already on the bus, I thought.
Following the man outside, however, showed me that there in fact was no bus. We walked to a black car parked along the curb. It was in relatively decent condition. Corrosion from rust was limited to the edges of the car's frame and nothing too serious. I climbed into the back seat.
Well, I guess it's just me, I thought to myself.
My driver opened his door and sat down. He fiddled with the radio for a moment before selecting a Mandarin talk-radio station. At the same time, I searched for a seat belt, which I quickly realized was a futile search.
Then we were off, driving through the center of the city, around the Drum Tower, down the street, then onto the second ring road. For those who don't know, Beijing's walls were knocked down in the cultural revolution to be replaced by the second ring road. While a convenient road for transportation, it is also a reminder of what the city has lost.
After driving for about half an hour, we stopped at a light. Crossing the road in front of us was a group of nearly thirty tourists (exactly 28, I later learned). Oh, I thought. Maybe they're going to the Great Wall, too. Clearly they were headed for one of the buses parked just to the side.
As it turns out, my guess was dead on.
The man driving the car executed a U-turn as the light turned green and drove to a stop in front of the bus. I was, I suddenly realized, not alone. And this man was certainly not my tour guide. He'd simply been asked by the hostel to take me to the tour.
The light bulbs, they flicker in my head.
I gathered up my bag and rushed onto the bus. Just in time, as it turned out. They were ready to leave.
Three hours later, the duration of which time I had been crammed into a tiny space between my arm rest and a large German man, we arrived. Only one stop had been required on the way, a bathroom break.
I note this because the tourists coming back on the bus made several incredulous noises relating to the dirt-hole nature of the bathroom. I barely suppressed my own incredulous noise; what exactly had they been expecting, I wondered? Just how romanticized were their views of rural China?
At any rate, we arrived at Jinshanling with no further incidents.
We got off the bus and had our first real glimpse of the Wall. The road we were on winded up the hills on the Northern side. On the highest hills in the distance, rising above the rest, was a lone tower. It was brownish in color and squat-looking, but clearly formidable. Off its sides ran two long, jagged lines, like the flattened wings of a ragged bird. Somehow, it was smaller than I had expected. But I also knew it was still quite far away and would seem much bigger soon enough.
What was exactly as expected was the crowd of local villagers trying to foist their assorted coke bottles and snickers bars onto us. Thanks to my unshaven face and dark sunglasses, they didn't seem to bother much with me. Still, a few people did approach me with offers. I simply shook my head in response and turned my face in another direction.
We continued on the road to the wall and discovered another group waiting for us. I took this group in stride, too. The same routine followed.
"Snicker? Snickers?" A chorus of 'no' erupts in response. "Water? Coca cola?" This time a few low chuckles are mixed in with the 'no.'
The group gets through, more or less unscathed.
After this second assault, we regroup in front of a map of the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall. Our tour guide informs us that we are to be back at that sign by 1:30 for lunch. Our bus will depart at 2. He drives this point home a few more times, then sends us on our way.
The way to the Great Wall consists of three parts. First is the bus to the entrance. Second is the road from the entrance to the trail. This bit has to be walked. Third, and finally, is a slim, ice-covered trail up the hillside from the road and onto the wall itself. Each part has its own group of vendors attempting to sell you various snacks and drinks. Mostly snickers bars, water, and coca cola. A few also offered beer, but whether anyone has ever actually bought that, I have no idea.
As we came up to the final third of the approach to the wall, the expectant group of vendors was waiting. They chatted among each other and seemed generally more jovial than the previous two groups. They were also all women.
When the trail, it was impossible to not also approach them. They had positioned themselves directly between us and the trail head. Frustrating though it was, I put my head down and tromped on through.
Something interesting was happening this time, though. Unlike the previous two groups, these women were following us up the trail. It sounded like they were propositioning us with goods, but I didn't hear any of the previous goods mentioned at all. No snickers, no water, no coca cola. In fact, the more I listened, the more I realized that the chatter I had been tuning out was actually chatter between the women. They weren't even talking to us.
I began to wonder what was going on. Was this another, domestic tour group? Their friendliness seemed to push this proposition forward. For instance, I slipped on a patch of black ice at one point and heard an accented voice behind me say "Be careful!" A light chuckle followed. These did not seem like the attitudes of saleswomen.
And yet they were sticking awfully close to us and some of them did not appear to be very well off. I couldn't decide what was going on for the first few minutes of walking on the trail. Who were these women?
Finally, once we were actually on top of the Great Wall itself, surrounded by a ring of these women, who were seemingly just waiting for us to move, I realized what was happening. Our tour guide, who had essentially disappeared, was not our real guide. These women were. And they were going to expect some sort of reward at the end.
I didn't like this very much. I had paid for a guide and I wanted the guide I had paid for. Either that, or I was going to be on my own. So, determined, I set off. It wasn't long before I was clearly in the lead, outpacing most of my fellow tourists.
It was also clear that I had a acquired a guide. She managed to stay a few steps ahead of me the entire time. At first, she offered to show me a route through some of the more difficult terrain, but those offers soon disappeared as she realized I didn't actually need that sort of guidance. Instead, she started explaining little features about the wall. Things like how you can tell which side is North, which are the newer sections, and which sections are 500 years old. Before long, I started to find I actually liked the woman.
We talked a little bit about where I was from and where she was from. Turns out she had been doing this every day for the past 10 years, that she was actually a farmer from over the hills, that she had two sons. Most shockingly to me, she said she was 37 ("old" by her reckoning). When I first saw her, I had estimated her age to be at least ten years older. Whether she was telling me the truth about her life of not, she clearly had had a difficult time.
The hike took me about an hour and a half each way. My guide and I were both sweating and panting by the time we reached the end. I had pushed her hard. Even though she had essentially forced herself onto me, I decided in the end that she had earned her souvenir. The prices were steep, but I didn't bother to haggle. I bought a book and a shirt and said farewell.
Lunch was an interesting affair, mostly because the food was not that interesting. Nearly all my other meals in China were delicious and very noteworthy, but this one was not. There was a lot of it, though, so I filled up and climbed on the bus.
On the way back, I discussed my hatred of Twilight with a French woman who was also part of the trip. And, as promised, I was back at the hostel by six that evening.
The next day, I woke up bright and early, climbed on a plane, and made my way back to Japan. And here I am, once again, Jeffles in Japan.
~Jeffles
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