The Great Wall, July 6

Beijing subway

Although it is less elegant and less consistent from station to station, car to car, Beijing subway is also very easy to figure out. There are time when it is very crowded, and you have to plan your exit, squeezing between passengers in time to exit the train.  But you must have exact change in coins, so I will have to start collecting . . . the security is also odd in places. Once I noticed that the xray machine must have been just a conveyor belt, since the picture the attendant looked at was not changing. Another time, my water bottle was detected, and I was asked to drink the water before passing; so after that I just carried it through in my hands, visible but not xrayed. Often the checkpoints were not in line between the entrance to the station and turnstile, so I doubt they were much used. At one point, there was a line to buy tickets, and it was an actual, snaking, patient line; something I thought did not happen in China. I guess these cultural changes are happening too, as well as the infrastructure and economic ones. I saw very little public spitting, some PJ wearing in Shanghai, and considerable tummy-displaying by men: they roll up their shirts over their stomachs on hot days. Restaurants and similar venues were not the smoke-filled dens I had been led to expect, either. It is amazing how the government can effect changes like this in a short time: I am thinking of the decades-long effort to curb smoking here.

My navigation challenge for the day: I succeeded in finding Comptoir de France: overrated and expensive, but anyway I found it, and walked a new neighborhood in the process! Practicing an archaic skill, map-reading. I met a South African woman and her about 16-17 year old son near the bus station where I was planning to catch a bus to the Great Wall.  She wailed, “Do you speak English? No one around here speaks English!” in an aggrieved tone. Cringeworthy. The kid seemed OK, and had an iPad. Which, true to form, he used to look at internet photos of where we were rather than out the window. So we figured out the bus thing with the help of helpful strangers; I had planned to go to the wall at Simatai, but wrote the wrong bus # down, and we all went to Mutianyu. Which was fine, as I came to appreciate later. Surprisingly, most tourists here were roundeyes, and  often the few Chinese turned out to be tour guides.

Our wonderful driver

A cab driver pulled us off the bus at Huiru shiqu and after a brief scuffle over prices (my heart is really not in it to fight for the last yuan any more) we hopped in and went the remaining 17 km, for 75 yuan for the three of us. This good man then shepherded us through the ticketing business, and finding the entrance, things that were typically complicated. (Normally, you buy the tickets in one place that is separate and sometimes not in eyeshot of the place you turn the tickets in.) And asked if he could wait to take us back when we were done. He was our guardian angel and made everything easy. Mrs South Africa was suspicious and anxious. She may actually be an OK person, but her preoccupation with avoiding everything to do with actual China or Chinese was offputting. However, I know I myself have failed to show gratefulness and graciousness for help at times when I have been anxious to figure out what was going on, where I was, not being able to communicate effectively etc., so.

There was a cable car up the mountain, which turned out to be an excellent idea because the climb would have been impossible: steep, far, hot. Probably illegal, too, I didn't see any provision for it. You stood on the platform and the cable car whacked you in the back of the knees, you perforce sat down, and off you went. As at Hangzhou temple, the air was wonderfully fragrant, but with something that looked like vitex; also wild crabapples the size of golf balls called haw-- a popular Popsicle flavor. Not at all like any forest I've seen before.  Then, jump off the moving cable car and start exploring.

The wall was...the wall, just like in the pictures, running along the crest of the mountain range. The guard towers had complicated arches and things and interior spaces, that didn't exactly form rooms. I didn't really organize the layout in my head, I now realize. It seemed random but surely it was not. The views of  the wall winding over the mountain were spectacular, and oddly, even though much of this section  is recently reconstructed and there was the cable car, it didn't seem disneyfied. The pictures cannot do it justice because the essential part was the space, the air and its fragrance and weight. Lots of Germans and Americans, some Italians...a toboggan ride down, but controlling it meant I couldn't really look at the surrounding woods closely unfortunately. My companions eagerly collected rocks, but for once I refrained. Anyway, I had this vision of  dumptrucks bringing a load of gravel to scatter around every night so visitors could collect 'real' bits of the wall. 

There was the usual gauntlet of souvenir hawkers at the bottom with the addition of dried fruit sellers where I paid outrageously for some tasty dried cherries and the South Africans posed for pics with some wizened old men dressed in Mongol suits (they were on the wrong side of the wall!) who, moments before had been smoking cigarettes and eating noodles out of styrofoam. Peter, it reminded me of the row of Janissaries smoking Salems after their performance in Istanbul.The driver found us, and we headed back. He had a little altar with small objects on the dashboard; when he saw that the boy was interested in collecting stones from the Great Wall, he gave him the one from his altar.

On the way back, we passed a field of light violet flowers, not lavender, which had about five white grand pianos and various brides swathed in white gauze with their compliant grooms-to-be scattered around for their wedding pictures. Quite surreal.Too bad the pictures didn't come out.

On the subway, I was contemplating a fat 6 year old who eagerly snatched the first seat available. I thought, this is one who will not get a girl when he grows up; unless he is rich enough to buy one from Thailand, which didn't seem to be the case. Chinese parents have a lot to worry about as well as be hopeful for.