May 16:I

Note: Some of these entries are really long, so, in hopes of alleviating some of the fear a long entry incites in readers, I've cut the next day-long entries into parts, as indicated by the Roman numerals.

Friday we set aside for the Great Wall of China. We obviously couldn't miss that. Getting there was going to be tricky, however. Most people go with a group or make arrangements with a tour office, while some 'hire' a private car (don't want to sound too British...). We hired a private taxi. The arrangements were a little sticky, since the people at our hotel didn't know exactly where we wanted to go: Jinshanling Great Wall. After helping them help us find it on a map, we told them we wanted to cab out to Jinshanling, hike over to a neighboring section of the wall called Simatai, and then cab back from there. It was an estimated 3 hours to Jinshanling, 4 hours for the hike itself, and another 3 hours for the trip back from Simatai.

We had been doing some reading up about trips to the Great Wall, and we knew we didn't (necessarily) want to go to Badaling Great Wall, which is the quintessential Chinese tourist trap (or so we'd read/heard), and William really wanted to get into the Chinese wilderness. So we were set on Jinshanling, even if nobody knew where it was. After we told the cabby where it was, he offered to do the whole thing (a ten-hour day) for 1000 yuan. I should interject here that I had, by this time, been flexing my haggling muscles, so I knew this was a jumping off point. I immediately said that it was too high, that a friend of ours had done the same trip for 300 yuan each way, 600 total, so that was my offer. The cabby (and the concierge, too, I might add) countered that it was that much to just Badaling which was visibly closer to Beijing and our hotel. So one of us (William says it was the concierge) offered 800, and it was set. We would have our trip to Jinshanling.

We arranged to have Mr. Bao, our cabby, meet us at the main hotel lobby at 8, allowing enough time for us to catch some breakfast. And then we were on our way. Now, only three long hours in a cramped taxi (which, thankfully, had AC) separated us from nature and the Great Wall of China. Aside from a pit stop at a gas station along the way (where Mr. Bao ran in, his own toilet paper in hand, to use the facilities), we made no stops. Once outside of Beijing, we traveled the length of the main highway for a long time before heading out into the real Chinese hinterlands. Here, the roads were lined with weather-beaten houses and businesses held together more by dirt than by mortar. Everything seemed tainted by the pollution in the air (and water and land, probably) and the dust pouring in from the nearby Gobi, which I read (in the Lonely Planet book) is encroaching daily on the city limits. The only thing that appeared new (indeed, many of them were still under construction) were the gas stations lining the sides of the road like so much concrete litter in China red and drab white. Sinopec and Sincpec (which may or may not have been a typo) were the only ones represented here; no Texaco, or 76, or Chevron. (In retrospect, I don't remember seeing a single gas station in Beijing as yet.)

When we saw tour buses leaving from the way we were going, we knew we were getting close. There was a great fork in the road where we veered left, off toward Jinshanling. The other tine led to Simatai. Soon afterward, we arrived at our destination, at about 10:30 am.

Jinshanling was unremarkable from the outside, except to say that there were no tour buses/vans (although there was a parking lot big enough for about a dozen of them), and--after reminding Mr. Bao to meet us at Simatai Great Wall at around 2:30--we paid our admission and went in to see the Great Wall of China. But first we had to pass some touts and their wares and we chatted briefly with a contingent of American students from Corvalis, OR (this far away from home) on an excursion. Further along, we came to a paper-cutting shop, which I was enchanted with. I'd been awed by the Chinese art of paper cutting ever since I'd seen the piece that Vivian Lam has hung up on her office wall. We found a number of great items, including a paper-cut of both my and William's Chinese zodiac animals (goat and monkey, respectively), but when she refused to work with me, I settled on only a couple of the things I'd picked out (as punishment for her not playing by the rules. Plus I have a sneaking suspicion that somewhere along the way I'll find another equally cute if not cuter paper-cuterie). Then, it was on to Jinshanling and the Great Wall.