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June 11, 2005
Day Three - The Jade Factory, the Great Wall and the Deyang Acrobatics Troupe
Hosannah and hallelujah! The sun came out Saturday morning! The sky was a bright and pretty blue, and the only clouds were high and thin. So what did we plan to do? Go climb the Great Wall in the blazing sun, natch!
The day started with breakfast in the Four Seasons restaurant downstairs. We're getting a bit braver about what to try -- I had apple juice and we both mandarin oranges with the other stuff today. We're still not touching dairy, but getting some fruit was good. I also tried lychees, which are a little odd. Sweet, but a bit bland, really.
We met some of the other travel families for the first time at the breakfast table, which was nice. Lots of Kentucky folks, lots more Boston/Mass folks. We cashed out another traveler's check for yuan (only the second one in four days, which tells you how cheap things are), and went back upstairs to get our gear together. I love taking pictures, but schlepping twenty pounds of digital gear 8,000 miles on your back does get old after a bit.
Anyway, by 8:30 we were on the road, all the Jiangxi families together in a big diesel bus with gold seats and, as we discovered later, a slightly drippy air conditioner right over our seats. The bus rolled north out of central Beijing and through the city. Everywhere, cranes sprouted like weeds through the pavement and toward the sky. Shiny glass skyscrapers sat side-by-side with stolid, gray, decaying Communist-style apartment blocks. You can easily tell the newer buildings from the old -- the newest structures aren't festooned with external air conditioners that look like so many warts covering them from top to bottom.
We passed into the Beijing suburbs, the skyscrapers giving way to lower five- and six-story residential and business blocks interspersed with the bright red canopies of Sinopec fuel stations and the dusty frameworks of industrial installations. The one thing that didn't change was the profusion of bright billboards and the general predilection for neon signage. At the outskirts of the city, we passed what was to have been Beijing's Disney park, abandoned in mid-construction after the financing failed, and since surpassed by the soon-to-open Disney Hong Kong.
Forty minutes out of Beijing, we pulled off the main road onto a dusty, tree-line service road and into the parking lot of the Banner jade factory. All around, construction was underway and dust covered everything. The soil had the look of needing rain, but the trees were green and growing.
Exiting the bus, we filed into the factory for a quick lecture on jade types and recognizing A, B and C grades thereof. Quick tip: Grade A jade rings like glass, and is translucent in the extreme. We saw three jade carvers in various stages of finishing pieces (one who, thanks to a complete absence of mouth and nose protection, is just about bound to have rock lung before he exits this world). On the sales floor, we were exhorted to buy something for our daughters.
This is a state-run facility, so we were assured by everyone (including our guide Rose) that the quality was high and the prices were fixed. Make no mistake, everything on the floor was beautiful, and we strolled around looking for almost the entire time. Worried about the weight of our bags, though, we bought nothing (and truthfully, nothing really grabbed us), except for a set of tiger-eye bracelets for Emma...just little kids' stuff. We shot a few pictures of some of the items, but honestly, you can find similar stuff in the US. It just costs a little more. The really exquisite carvings were (a) too fragile for us to get home, and (b) too expensive for our budget. So we left mostly empty-handed. We're horrible shoppers, no?
Back on the bus, we turned north again, headed toward the sharp mountains rising just ahead. The transition from plains to mountains is quite impressive. There's no gradual foothills rising to the higher elevations. The mountains just start. They're sharp, too, punching into the sky like tree-covered dragon's teeth.
Rose said a massive effort has been underway for years now to plant more trees on the plain and mountains surrounding Beijing. Each Arbor Day, the Chinese plant well over a million trees. On the North China Plain around Beijing, this effort has been especially successful. As the trees have matured, they've formed a windbreak that has vastly reduced the severity of the huge winter loess storms that coat the city in yellow dust each year. Here on the outskirts, the effort has been particular visible, with row after rigid row of mature trees. Those rows are also especially evident in the mountains. You can tell which mountainsides have been planted, because the trees grow in horizontal rows, rather than a random carpet.
A short way into the mountains, we reached Ju Yong Pass, a heavily fortified installation along the Great Wall. We piled off the bus, stepping out into the bright sun and heat. Before breaking up to climb, we grouped up for a big all-families photograph and a brief admonishing to Rose to climb for no more than an hour before returning. Then, fortifying ourselves with Crystal Light-laced bottles of water and a determination to climb as high as time allowed, we set out.
The wall was crowded, the high, narrow, irregularly-spaced steps covered with people speaking a dozen different languages, moving in both directions, and often pausing to catch their breath. We finished the short, sharp climb to the first watch tower in good shape, and moved on. A few hundred feet along, we discovered a welcome surprise -- the crenellations along the wall caught and focussed the northerly breeze, making the spaces between a welcome place to stop and dry some of the sweat that coated us both from head to to.
Two watch towers down and we climbed on. The sharpest sections were now behind us, and the remaining climb, while often steep, was nowhere near the kind of knee torture represented by the first two legs. Past the second tower, the crowds thinned considerably. As with Kristen and Joe, we were consistently embarrassed by the older Chinese on the wall. We would climb for a hundred feet, passing by an old Chinese woman in dark shirt and pants, her dark skin dry and clear. Out of breath, we stopped, panting and sipping our water. The old woman would climb steadily by us, muttering to herself in a tone that sounded like half a meditation and half an imprecation, the latter most likely directed either at the heat -- which was rapidly becoming oppressive, or the out-of-shape gweilos blocking her path.
By the fourth tower, we knew we were giving out. The worn gray stone steps were increasingly looking like cliffs, and the stops at the crenellations for breeze-catching were getting more frequent. That worked out about right, timing-wise, because it was nearly time to turn around and head back. Determined to press as far as time would allow, we made a fifth tower, and stopped. I climbed atop the tower and shot a few pictures and some video. Only one couple went further than we did, and then only another tower or so.
After a longish stop for breezes and water, we started back down, knees shaking with each step. Our grip on the rusty iron railing was tighter, but the going was easier and the crowds virtually nonexistent at this level. The views from the wall and towers were phenomenal, stretching miles in every direction, even with the haze. Down the valley, a river had been dammed and channeled to service some kind of industrial installation. A 45-degree turn to the right, though, showed nothing but mountains stretching away into the distance.
By the time we hit the second tower from the bottom again, the crowds were picking back up slightly, and we slowed our pace to accommodate. The passage through the first tower was practically blocked withe people cooling off inside the tower's thick masonry walls, and standing in front of the south-facing windows to catch any breeze they could.
Past that tower, we stopped at a small stand perched on the mountainside to buy more water and get photo cards certifying that we are heroes of the PRC for climbing the Great Wall. Or at least a small portion of it. We joked about being heroes of a Communist regime, knowing all the while that we would remember this day for the rest of our lives, sunburnt shoulders, weak knees, crowds and all.
Back aboard the bus, we headed south toward Beijing. About 10 minutes into the trip, we stopped at a sort of combined restaurant, shop and cloisonne workshop. Lunch was served traditional style, with individual dishes brought and placed on a large lazy susan in the center of the table. Fried rice, glutinous sweet rice, a variety of beef and chicken dishes, fried potatoes, roast beef slices, Chinese chips and a host of other dishes made the rounds, each accompanied by choruses of "What's that?" and "No, you try it first." In the end, we left full and satisfied to browse the Friendship Store for a time, marveling at the beautiful cloisonne pieces and scrolls, but buying nothing. We were still too concerned about our bags being overweight.
We arrived back at the hotel sweaty and beat...and then promptly washed up and piled back on the bus to go see the Deyang Acrobats. A lot of detail on this show isn't necessary -- if you've seen anything Cirque du Soleil does, you've seen this. Of course, that's because a lot of Cirque's performers are Chinese. The show, though, was really impressive. We picked up a DVD to show everyone.
Dinner at the Four Seasons restaurant in the hotel was another lazy-susan multi-dish affair. I goofed and asked the waitress for a glass of ice. Fortunately, Lara was there to remind me that anything water-based is a bad idea, so I made it out unscathed.
We collapsed into bed around 10 and, surprisingly even in light of the day's exertions, slept.
Posted by brlittle at June 11, 2005 09:28 AM