Great Wall, Great Dinner

August 27

Didn't get too much done this day.

Maomerabilia

The morning got off to a slow start, and mostly we walked around Liu Li Chang Jie checking out the tourist trap souvenir shops. We had a moderately successful bartering experience (got the price down a little, at least) involving a copy of Mao's Little Red Book.

Temple of Heaven

The afternoon was spent arranging a trip to the Great Wall, and visiting the Temple of Heaven. The Temple of Heaven was awesome, and the buildings on the temple grounds are constructed so that you can produce an echo from just about any part of any one of them. But one of the best parts of it was entirely unexpected. In this place called the Long Hall (it's a hall, and it's long) we ran across a series of clusters of people. The center of each of these clusters consisted of a small group of musicians and a single, terribly animated conductor. And everyone was singing their hearts out. The songs sounded like old nationalistic tunes that they might have learned in school, and the performances were just amazing. You have to understand that these were spontaneously formed groups of people. Maybe the conductor and the musicians were accompanied by a small group of singers, but apart from that it seemed that passersby just walked up to the crowd, got handed a piece of sheet music, and joined in. And this group of strangers managed to create melody and harmony, with the full range of deep bass to glass-shattering soprano (hearing a soprano in Chinese music from up close is an experience in itself).

The day after that was a bit of a farce.

Running around like chickens with heads cut off

On our way out of the Temple of Heaven, a taxi driver offered to take us back to the subway station, and quoted a price that could have been either 15 or 50. We didn't want anything to do with a taxi driver who wasn't going to go by his meter, so we walked away. Then another guy quoted us 14 or 40. I checked with hand gestures that he meant 14, and he nodded his head. That sounded like about the right amount, so we got in. Turns out he meant 40. We were taken aback, and managed to get him down to 30. So we lost yet another haggling battle, but at least we weren't entirely routed.

We then rushed our way to the Lama Temple and Temple of Confucious, arriving at each just after closing time. At least we got to see the walls of these complexes, which were of course quite tall and entirely concealed the beautiful, ancient buildings housed within.

We then rushed our way out to the grounds of the Old Summer Palace, quite a ways out from the city center. The Old Summer Palace used to be for the Emperor, until Europeans burned it down and made their own palace on the grounds, which was destroyed in turn. China preserved the ruins as a message to future generations about China's past humiliation, and apparently school children take trips there to write patriotic messages on the remains of the European buildings. Sounds pretty good. Well, we made it to the gates before the place closed, but, 1) they were doing some sort of landscaping on the grounds such that a) the usually scenic lakes had been entirely drained, and in their stead b) walls of sheet metal had been put up so you couldn't see anything from the paths; in addition 2) the ruins of the Old Summer Palace itself were contained behind yet another gate, and we missed the closing time for that. So, it turned out that we paid good money to see some ugly sheet metal and not much else.

Eating a duck with its head cut off, and cut in half, and served with gizzard

Next was dinner at Quanjude, and Peking duck to end all Peking duck, by which I mean we ate an entire duck between the two of us. The dish was different from the Peking duck we got back in Vancouver in a couple of ways. In Vancouver, Peking duck is served with just the skin of the duck, but at Quanjude it was served with meat and skin, but no styrofoam chips. Also we were served the duck's gizzard (which tasted fine) and head (which might have tasted fine, but we didn't try it--in our defense, we couldn't have eaten much of anything after going through the duck proper).

Mao must be turning over in his climate-controlled display case

There is a clear division of labour among the female staff at Quanjude. The prettiest, impossibly skinny girls, probably about 23 and under, wear red dresses with long slits up the sides and serve as hostesses, ushering guests into the waiting area, giving them numbers, and taking them to the dining area. The next most attractive women get yellow jackets and are your servers. Then come the older women--30 and above--who have ugly orange vests and clean up after you. Three distinct and clearly identifiable classes. So much for communism.

August 28

This day was GREAT. Get it?

First contact with tour groups

There are three main sections of the Wall accessible from Beijing (in decreasing order of level of convenience and touristiness ): Badaling, Mutianyu, and Simatai. Although we'd like to stear clear of tour groups, we caved in on this occasion, because we weren't sure we could manage the trip to the Great Wall ourselves. We'd originally booked a tour to Simatai, but then we got a call suggesting that we cancel. The road there was under construction, it was claimed, and would add 2 hours to our trip to the Great Wall. If we switched to Mutianyu, we would save that time and get 240 yuan back as a refund.

It sounded suspicious, and our suspicion increased when the tour guide informed us that we were supposed to give her the 240 yuan. After a bit of arguing... well, let's call it clarification, and a call back to the tour group office, it turned out to be a simple misunderstanding. She gave us the money (out of her own pocket--I hope her boss wasn't trying to scam her in turn), and all was well with the world. Indeed, we didn't get scammed once today!

The tour group included a Pakistani dude, a Spanish dude, an Australian woman working as a geologist in Outer Mongolia, and a Canadian couple living in Ethiopia with their two adopted Ethiopian daughters. (Quote from one of the daughters: "Boo, Satan!" Shades of I Heart Huckabees. Narrowly avoided conversation: "We took two Ethiopian orphans into our home!" "Yes, but how did Ethiopia happen, ma'am?" etc.)

We don't need no northern invasion/We don't need no Mongol Hordes

Fabulous. There were quite a few people there, but the number of tourists was low enough that you could occasionally get a look at the Wall, sans people, in the more difficult sections. Unfortunately the air was really hazy, but when the wind kicked up it cleared up a bit and we were able to get some stunning views of the more distant parts of the wall which are closed to tourists. The experience was also somewhat marred by the people trying to sell stuff to Kate (but never me--looking Chinese can have its advantages), and the time limit imposed by the tour group (I managed to make it to all 14 watchtowers open to the public at Mutianyu, but I nearly passed out in the process).

To top it all off, you can ride down from the Wall on this "toboggan" run. It was a great way to end the trip, although the Canadian mom in our tour group said she saw another tourist stopped halfway down bleeding from the face.

Hakka Hakka burning love

Later that evening we had dinner at Lao Hanzi, a chaotic restaurant serving Hakka cuisine. The service was... difficult. There was a hierarchy of staff similar to that at Quanjude, but it was never explained to us, and they didn't make it particularly easy for us to puzzle out on our own. We eventually figured it out (and passed our wisdom on to another table of foreigners which neighboured ours in the apparent Caucasian Corner), and after that our food came with welcome promptness. We ordered way too much food, and I ate so much I thought I might reenact that scene from Meaning of Life.

Lao Hanzi is one of many restaurants and bars located along Lake Houhai, and we were able to fit in some nighttime sightseeing after dinner--Kate took some shots across the lake that she'll probably stitch into something like a 10 picture panorama. Quite lovely. This area is a really popular meeting place, especially for couples, it would seem, and after dinner we ran into a large group of couples ballroom dancing (tango, I think) in a clearing between the lake and the nearest boulevard. Just dancing, in public, to music coming from some guy's stereo system.

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