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In the musical “Aida,” the pharaohess begins her narration with the line “Every story is a love story.” In China, I would have to argue that “every story is a sad story.” In the course of my East Asian Studies classes, I have read several translated Chinese novels by such famous authors as Lao She, Mo Yan, Lu Xun, and Ma Jian, and I am now embarking on a new adventure, reading my first Chinese novel in Chinese. It seems that all of these writers love to embrace the tragic. In fact, most Chinese authors I’ve read, including the celebrated Chinese-American author Amy Tan, describe the most extreme of sorrowful situations… horrible deaths (such as drowning in a vat of feces), social or political injustice, suicide, abuse and beatings, mothers drowning babies, starvation and dire poverty, even cannibalism. Needless to say, there has been a lot of cruelty, injustice, and suffering in the course of human history, no matter what civilization, that deserves attention. What I don’t understand is that I have not once come across a Chinese novel that is not absolutely tragic. The book I am reading now is called the Age of Tattoos. I have only read the first 12 pages, but this is what has happened so far: Pregnant woman falls through frozen lake on her way to night shift at a Lime factory. Somehow she gives birth in the icy water and manages to save the infant before she dies (by page 2). By page 5, that infant, who is now nine years old, is hit by a train and has his leg amputated. That nine year old’s older brother is partially responsible, and the father beats him relentlessly. Older brother decides to take revenge on father, has his gang of friends beat up his own father. Then the brother’s gang gets in a fight with another gang, and the older brother is stabbed multiple times until his intestines are falling out. He dies.

Anyway, that’s as far as I have read, and I’m almost afraid to continue. It can only get better from here, right?

My theory is that in the West, we love to live vicariously. Watching people on TV with lives better than our own is a way of gaining a little bit of pleasure. I feel that in China it is the reverse, watching or reading about characters with lives much more miserable than your own is a way of making you life seem relatively good. I’ll have to test out this theory.

In the meantime, enjoy your feel good movies and books!

Scene from the Ballet "Red Detachment of Women"

Sunday was Women’s Day, and I celebrated by doing a stereotypically feminine thing -going to the ballet. The ballet was a revolutionary Communist creation titled the “Red Detachment of Women,” a propaganda piece that only mildly resembled classical Western ballet. If you are familiar with ballet, or recently seen the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, then you know that ballet is all about the lines. In this ballet, the dancers certainly had a line, but not what I would consider a classical ballet line. Rather, the lines were more rooted in tai ji and martial arts, and in some cases were dissolved all together when the ballet veered off in the direction of traditional Chinese folk dance. Of course at the time this ballet was created (it premiered in 1963 at the very same theater we went to on Sunday-wonder which seat Mao sat in…) the anti-rightest, anti-capitalist, and anti-West mentality was in full swing. Anything deemed bourgeois or Western was immediately labeled counter-revolutionary and banned. Ballet of course, is a typically Western art form, and the only way it survived in Maoist China was by radically changing the form and content. Although the most fundamental principles of ballet were retained, a lot was changed to purge its bourgeoisie nature. In fact, several dance moves were strictly prohibited, including the pas de deux and echappe. Also, using these French names was also banned. Grace and beauty, principle tenets of Western ballet, were replaced with strength and militarism. In fact, the dancers all underwent military training in order to rehearse the ballet. According the history of the ballet printed in the program, “An army general pointed out that the female dancers looked like women [no duh], not soldiers. They immediately stopped rehearsing and sent the dancers…for military training.” As result of this training, clenched fists replaced elegant hand movements, pirhouettes were sharp and precise, leaps were meticulously timed, and all throughout dancers were dressed in soldier’s uniforms carrying assorted weaponry -swords, handguns and long rifles. The most shocking moment of the ballet, given that it is indeed a ballet, is when the evil landlord is shot. As he staggers off into the horizon, half-dead, the Red Army steps into formation and shoots after him, firing simultaneously, shot after shot after shot. It was in the most literal sense of the word, overkill. Chairman Mao’s impression of the ballet also cracks me up. 方向是对的， 革命是成功的，艺术上也是好的。 “The direction was correct, the revolution was successful..the artistry was also good.” His last comment on the artistry seems a mere afterthought, which it probably was. We all know what Mao’s priorities were, and it was definitely not art or culture. But, despite the overtly communist connotations of the ballet, it was still highly entertaining and culturally enlightening. I would certainly place this ballet among the so-called 70% good that came out of Mao’s China.

On our way to Yin bar at 6 pm. Yin bar is off Chang’an Road, where the Forbidden City and Tiananmen are located, but conveniently, the entire road was closed, as was the 2nd Ring road. We got out of our cab here and decided to walk to the subway. You will notice the caravan of white vans on the other side of the road driving the wrong way. Gotta love a totalitarian government that puts its needs before its citizens.
Walking to the subway. This 15 foot bridge had 10 policeman guarding it. The road it was next to was closed, so there were nor cars. What were they gaurding? 3) The subway at 6 pm on a Friday evening, normally the busiest subway time, is eerily empty. 4) Olympic “volunteers” man the streets at 5o ft. intervals. I don’t really know what they are volunteering to do, because they refused to help me take a picture. I guess there only job description is to stand on the street and wear an armband.
There was a lot of Olympic spirit on the streets. These girls in a van shout to us and wave flags. We responds with a cheery “Happy Olympics!” 6) This Chinese man loves the Olympics. 7) We take a picture with him, no thanks to the “volunteer” on the side of the street who refused to take the picture for me. We got a fellow Olympics lover to help us.
At Yin Bar, We enjoy our free champagne. Although the TV screens were as not as big as we would have liked, we did get to meet the designer of the Olympic Medals, and the designer of the Olympic torch. We even got to take a picture with the torch!
After staying at Yin for an hour, we decided to go to another party at our friend’s house, who had a projector and a ten foot screen. American colors and flags were everywhere, as the party consisted of mostly Americans, with three Canadians, two Irish, and two Inner Mongolians in the mix. When the American team marched out onto the field, we cranked up an American song extremely loud and simply went crazy. Dancing, chanting, and yells of “America, F*** yeah!” filled the air for a good 5 minutes.

Intermittent Boos could also be heard whenever the camera panned to our 所谓 president. But immediately reverted back to cheering when the camera panned back to the athletes. I believe Putin was also heavily booed for some reason. When the Chinese team came on, we started chanting “Inner Mongolia, Let’s Go,” to the delight of our two inner Mongolian friends. The Candadians and the Irish did their best to cheer with the same enthusiam as the Americans, but to no avail.

As the camera panned from the waving athletes parading their colors at the Olympic Open Ceremony to their respective nation’s leaders sitting in the stands, it was clear that the joy of one world coming together and engaging in friendly competition was not a sentiment equally shared by the world’s top leaders, at least according to their facial expressions.

As the camera panned from the waving athletes parading their colors at the Olympic Open Ceremony to their respective nation’s leaders sitting in the stands, it was clear that the joy of one world coming together and engaging in friendly competition was not a sentiment equally shared by the world’s top leaders, at least according to their facial expressions.
When the British team entered the stadium, the camera shot to Gordon Brown, who smiled reservedly and waved. President Bush and wife gave their classic, well-rehearsed wave and bemused smile that they display at every public event, which at least imparted a small sense of enthusiasm and joy of attendance. Russia’s Vladimir Putin didn’t even crack a smile when his compatriots paraded in, and instead remained rather grim, as did the elderly Chinese woman sitting by his side (Who was she?) But his grimness was no match for the Chinese statesmen, who despite all the hype, media attention, BILLIONS of dollars spent, countless international battles to save the “face of the nation,” extraordinary economic policies and pollution measures, and 7 -count them, 7- years of waiting, their faces did not show the slightest trace of pride, joy or enthusiasm. Instead, they were stoic, blank, even hostile looking, as they watched, as we Americans joked, for any one of the thousands of performers to mess up and then order him jailed for “subverting state power.”
I guess the Chinese government has always been above the law it dictates and the slogans it spews, including the sartorial slogan, “Volunteer’s Smile, Beijing’s Image.” I guess in it’s efforts to clean up Beijing’s “image,” the Capital Spiritual Civilization Construction Commission missed the country’s leaders. Hu was not smiling, and was probably even wearing white socks with black shoes (gasp! what an uncivilized country this is!).
However, in truth Hu’s dour face was an anomaly amongst the super excited Chinese people within the stands and out on the streets of Beijing. In the two hours leading up to 8:08 on 8/08/08, even babies were proudly displaying their Olympic spirit with flags stuck into their hats, in their pockets, taped onto their shirts, and fake tatooed on their faces. Having had the day off, the atmosphere reflected that of a holiday. It was like Christmas. We even began shouting “Happy Olympics!”

(奥运节快乐！）with the same cheer as one would say Merry Christmas or Happy Birthday. The volunteers and even the policemen were in a good mood. Earlier that day I even had a nice chat with a policeman and helped him help lost foreign tourists. Everyone, except Hu, was in a good mood and showed it openly.
Even the goverenment’s idiocy in closing off an entire ring road (way to convenience your citizens and tourists there government) was not enough to really dampen our mood in the beginning. It was hot and we walked 1 mile to our destination after the subway could only take us so far. However, we finally got to the Emperor Hotel and sat on the roof of Yin bar, drinking free champagne as we watched the first half of the Opening Ceremony. The ceremony was truly incredible. Zhang Yimou does know how to put on a good show, although it is interesting to note that many of his films are banned by the government, and now he is a tool of the state. I guess times change.
Many more Olympic posts to follow!

Everyone knows that food is an important part of culture, and nowhere is it so evident than in China. Whereas food in nearly all cultures is important for physical and social reasons, food in China has a stunning variety of importance attached to it. Banquets are frequently used as a lubricant to butter up government officials and wheedle business deals; “Have you eaten?” has been and still is a common expression of greeting in China instead of a plain “hello”.

Everyone knows that food is an important part of culture, and nowhere is it so evident than in China. Whereas food in nearly all cultures is important for physical and social reasons, food in China has a stunning variety of importance attached to it. Banquets are frequently used as a lubricant to butter up government officials and wheedle business deals; “Have you eaten?” has been and still is a common expression of greeting in China instead of a plain “hello”; Traditional medicine lays great emphasis on holistically altering your body’s chemistry by advocating and prohibiting the ingestion of certain foods and herbs; Plenty of symbolism and superstition are attached to certain types of foods (I’ve eaten a deep-fried fish eye because it would ‘bring me luck’); and even physical beauty is associated with things that you can chew, swallow and digest.

Peter Hessler offers amusing insight on this last subject when he shares what his Chinese students of English envision “Shakespeare’s woman through Chinese eyes” to be like. Apparently this beauty would have fingers as “slim as the root of an onion….so slender that scallions can’t compare with them,” her skin would be “soft and white, like cooked fat,” and her waist would be soft as “water grass”.

Food and physical beauty seem to have quite the connection in Chinese culture. Kao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher, did after all say “Appetite for food and sex is nature.” This being the case, some Chinese expressions link food and female anatomy more scandulously, and a seemingly innocent phrase about eating something may not be as innocent as one might think, as Andy found at recently.

There are a lot of phrases in the Chinese language that use the word “to eat” in a non-scandoulous way: 吃苦 chi ku is a commonly used phrase that means “eat bitter,” in other words, suffer/endure hardship. 吃醋 Chi Cu literally means “eat vinegar,” in other words be jealous ( primarily in a love affair).

After his coworker invited his usual Starbucks buddy to go downstairs for coffee and they both forgot to invite him, Andy playfully pretended to be jealous when they got back. His Chinese coworker told him that he loved to Chi Cu (be jealous). Andy, jokingly says he just loves to Chi Doufu.

吃豆腐 Chi Doufu – literally means to “eat tofu,” and according to my Chinese dictionary means “1) to tease; flirt; 2) engage in minor sexual harrassment.” Aside from the fact that flirting and sexual harrassment, even “minor” sexual harrassment, are verrrry different things, neither of these meanings are correct.

Upon utterance of these words, the Chinese coworker gasps in horror. Andy of course doesn’t understand her reaction, until after much coaxing he finally gets her to reveal the real meaning of this phrase. Apparently it means, in the words of the Chinese coworker, to “lick breasts.”

I missed my weekly bike ride this weekend because the air pollution was too bad to even be outdoors for more than an hour, much less exercise heavily. I also decided to skip an outdoor pool party, but still managed to float around in an indoor pool for a couple hours with friends. Overall, we were trapped indoors all weekend because the air resembled pea soup. Except not green, just white/gray.

I missed my weekly bike ride this weekend because the air pollution was too bad to even be outdoors for more than an hour, much less exercise heavily. I also decided to skip an outdoor pool party, but still managed to float around in an indoor pool for a couple hours with friends. Overall, we were trapped indoors all weekend because the air resembled pea soup. Except not green, just white/gray.

The air pollution index has been over 100 for the past four days. 113 on Thurs, 110 Friday, 115 on Saturday, and on Sunday it hit 125 right before the measurement deadline (Caijing Magazine).

However, despite the pollution index reports, the government assures us that the air quality is not as bad as it looks. Regard this sentence from a magazine article quoting a government official. “…..Haze/Fog does not represent air pollution. He [the govt official] expresses that this haze/fog decreases air visibility, but ‘it is like being in a bathroom taking a shower where you can’t see the person across from you.’”

The new subway line opened! Non-Beijingers will probably fail to feel any excitement about it, rightly so, but for those who have been watching the development of Beijing’s new infrastructure, everyone can now let out the one word they have kept bottled up for the past two months -Finally! Originally scheduled to open in May, authorities have kept delaying the opening date, until it got to the point that no one knew when the subway line would open, not even the government spokesman! This past week, when an official was asked when the line would open, he said …before Monday! Maybe even Friday, or Saturday! He really had no idea.

The new subway line opened! Non-Beijingers will probably fail to feel any excitement about it, rightly so, but for those who have been watching the development of Beijing’s new infrastructure, everyone can now let out the one word they have kept bottled up for the past two months -Finally! Originally scheduled to open in May, authorities have kept delaying the opening date, until it got to the point that no one knew when the subway line would open, not even the government spokesman! This past week, when an official was asked when the line would open, he said …before Monday! Maybe even Friday, or Saturday! He really had no idea.

But fortunately, the subway opened this past Sunday. Andy and I celebrated the occasion by packing up our folding bikes with the intent of taking the subway all the way to the end of the line (about 24 km out) and then biking back (After our 70 km ride the previous day.. ugh! I need to get bike shorts!)

Unfortunately we encountered a little snag. The rules clearly state that no bicycles are allowed on the subway, which is completely sensical. However, we had our bikes folded in half, with the seat removed, and stuck in a bag. It looked exactly like a piece of baggage, which you ARE allowed to bring on the subway, if not for the simple reason that the subway is now connected to the Airport Express, with the hope that more people will use the metro to get to the airport instead of taxis or cars and thus contribute to improving the quality of Beijing’s air.

However, due to new security rules for the Olympics, everyone has to pass their bags through an X-Ray machine. Fine. But then, they discover it is a bike.

“Forbidden to take Bicycle on Subway” we were formally told in Chinese. Having already taken our bikes on the metro once before, we were told that the rule forbidding bicycles all of a sudden began yesterday. We then argue that even though it is a bicycle, it is folded up and in a bag. It should be considered the equivalent of a piece of luggage. However, after the X-Ray they know its a bike in there, not clothing, pirated dvds and bottles of baijiu, so they argue we can’t bring it on the subway. We argue back saying that if we are allowed to take this thing in a bag on an airplane and a train, we should be allowed to take it on the subway. I even say, “what if we were going to the airport and it was a piece of our luggage? We should be able to take all our belogings to the airport on the airport express. What if tourists to the Olympics bring their own bike and are coming from the airport. What do you say to them?” After this, we were told to wait a sec while they talked to a supervisor.

After waiting 5 minutes, standing by the X-Ray machine, the person comes back and tells us to go right in, without any further ado. Apparently they realized their irrationality. I love it when I (logic and reasoning) win.

I think I am nutrient deficient; the most telling signal is that my hair has become unprecedentedly thin, weak and brittle. I used to have nightmares in which I lose all my teeth, now I will probably have nightmares about losing all my hair!

I think I am nutrient deficient; the most telling signal is that my hair has become unprecedentedly thin, weak and brittle. I used to have nightmares in which I lose all my teeth, now I will probably have nightmares about losing all my hair!

I have noticed however, that for this past month, my diet has been conspicuously devoid of fresh fruits and vegetables, to an extreme degree. I had been eating a lot of rice and meat curries, noodles, a lot of Middle Eastern dishes (kebobs, couscous, and hummus with bread), and Chinese dishes that although have vegetables, don’t really seem to deliver on nutrient content due to the unhealthy amount of oil and MSG.

I have decided to fix this, and have been stockpiling on fresh fruits and veggies, and making dinners that are at least 60% fruit/veggie related. Hopefully that helps with my hair situation. Now hopefully my nightmares are limited to my shadow coming to life and strangling me to death (not just mine, but in a crazy dream I had last night, everyone’s shadow comes to life when direct sunlight creates the perfect silhouette, and they then try to strangle their “owners.” Once the human is dead, the shadows were free to assume an independent life. The only way to escape a shadow that has come to life is to run into the shade or a dark room. It was a very strange, graphic dream.)

*White Mans= Vitamins in Chinglish.

For National Holiday, October 2007, I went on a two-day camping adventure on the Great Wall.

Pre-Expedition

There were five of us all together, and it took about half a day before-hand to prepare: I had brought a sleeping bag, but we also needed mats (we weren’t sure if we would be sleeping in a guard tower, or if we would try to get off the wall and try to find a relatively flat clearing on the mountain side, but either way, mats were essential. We also bought a cooking stove, and a ton of not- good-for-you snacks filled with carbs and calories for energy, and some good snacks, like banana chips and peanuts. We also da baoed (boxed) some relatively unspoilable Chinese food, like noodles, froze them, and carried them with us. Unfortunately one of the dishes we got had meat in it, which we forgot about, and had to throw away (because no one wanted to get sick off of spoiled meat in the middle of nowhere). Our biggest concern was bringing enough water, and being able to carry it (carrying water on your back can get pretty heavy, and climbing the great wall is already difficult and treacherous without 60 pounds on your back). So we decided on ten bottles each, with the hope of not getting lost and dying of thirst, or falling off a cliff because our bag slipped). Andy was very concerned about the water situation, by the way.

The Natural Gate

The Plan

You may be wondering how we possibly could get lost if we were simply walking on the Great Wall. Doesn’t the wall go in one direction (or two, depending on if you are going East to West or West to East)? The answer is no, the Wall has areas where it forks in different directions. Also, most of the wall is broken, resulting in a lot of the Wall being nothing but ruins, covered in brush and overgrowth, so much that you can lose the wall completely (which is what happened to us).

The decision makers (Andy and Pete) decided to start from a non-touristy wall entrance, huanghua cheng, and then hike thirty kilometers to Mutianyu, a more touristy section of the Wall. We got contradictory statements whether it was actually possible to hike from one part to the other, some said you could, some said it was impossible. We decided to take the chance and go for it. All that we were told by the people who said it was possible was that if we come to a fork in the wall, stay right. Otherwise, we would be in the middle of nowhere, which would be a very bad thing if we ran out of water. So, we hired a mianbao che (a little minibus) to take the five of us to the wall. It took 2.5 hours to arrive.

Mao Watches

The Explorers set out

We arrive, and the first thing we decide to do was stock-pile on some energy, a.k.a eat lunch. Normally I do not eat rice with meals (useless starchy carbs with nearly no nutritional value in the long run) but we all ate a bowl of rice, and some vegetables and meat of course. While we were there, we met some Canadians who were eating lunch at the next table. One had been living here for 9 and a half years (and forty pounds, his words, not mine). He saw our huge backpacks (I did not have a camping backpack, so poor Andy had to carry both his and my sleeping bags and mats, resulting in him having the biggest and heaviest bag). And we told him our plan. He of course thought it was ludicrous (himself being extremely unfit) and said that we would only be able to make it to the fourth guard tower! However, he gave us the card of the owner of the restaurant, in case we got in trouble or needed some friendly guanxi for whatever reason. After lunch we  set out for the actual wall. Being an unrenovated section, we actually had to use a ladder to get onto the wall (normally there are steps). It was a rickety wooden ladder, and extremely difficult to climb, more so with heavy sacks on our backs. So that was the first obstacle. After that, the entire Wall was ours, and with the one exception of spotting some foreigners briefly at one section of the wall that was close to a village (which was a godsend on the way back, since we didn’t know it was “near” civilization until then), we didn’t see another soul.

Repaired Wall

Sometimes you get the Wall, sometimes the Wall gets you

We set off on the Wall at about noonish, which meant we had roughly 7 hours of hiking time before it would get dark and we would be forced to stop. Climbing is hard. The Wall has very steep inclines and descents, and as we were on an especially perilous section, entire chunks of the wall would be missing or nothing but a heap of rubble. We got pretty lucky with alternative path finding. We were able to bypass a whole mountain peak by finding a path that curved downwards across the mountain side to another part of the wall.

One time we didn’t get so lucky. On a particularly tricky climb over rocks and through brush, our group decided to split up. Andy and Pete wanted to attempt to rock climb, while Ally and I (and Jon, since the boys oh so chivalrously decided that one boy needed to stay with the women (right)) decided to follow a path that we thought would lead us up the mountain and back on the wall. We had a beautiful hike through wilderness, (not entirely wilderness, because there were small terraced plots of corn and squash, but still no soul to be seen), However, there was no way to get back on the wall! We soon discovered that we were on the Mongol side of the wall, and experienced first hand why the Wall was built, to keep the Mongols out. Being the Mongols kind of sucked, because it meant the three of us had to backtrack back to the point where we first split up and climb up the way Andy and Pete did.

Explorer Devi Framed by the Wall

The Climb of Terror

During the course of the hike there was a lot of tiptoeing past perilous drops where the Wall’s walls were non-existent, and there was a significant amount of rock climbing, but nothing compared to one section of the wall that we had to get past (twice as it will turn out) which I shall refer to as the Climb of Terror. Okay, so maybe the others might refer to is as the Climb of Relative Scariness, but as I am scared of heights, I was pretty afraid. I’m not exactly sure how far the drop was, but if you fell, the least that would happen would be broken limbs and internal bleeding, and the worst, well thank God the worst did not happen.

What made it particularly scary in the psychological sense was that if one of us had fallen, we were absolutely in the middle of nowhere, with no one around. It was hard enough to carry our own bodies this far, and would have been close to impossible to carry someone back had it been necessary. I should say here and now (especially if Grandma reads this) that we are all fine, and the only injuries I have are incredibly sore muscles and lots of tiny lacerations on my arms and legs from hiking through brush. Ally had the worst injuries, which were still nothing but cuts and bruises after she fell and rolled down a particularly steep section of the wall as we were descending. Luckily she had her pack on, which protected her back and kept her from rolling further.

Anyway, back to the climb of terror, think of going mountain climbing up a nearly vertical precipice. Then think of trying to scramble onto a crumbling wall with scary drops on either side, and being well aware that the wall could crumble beneath you at any time. Then think of trying to get incredibly heavy bags up with you at the same time. And then think of the girl who’s scared of heights trying not to hyperventilate while holding on for dear life while others have to hoist bags up the cliff while she’s uselessly clinging to a rock face. I don’t remember much of the ascent besides being scared, but I think people pulled and shoved me to get me up there. Anyway, at least I made it .

What do we do about that?

The Campsite

After that adventure, dusk was quickly settling in, which meant that we had to hurry up and find a campsite before it got too dark to see. We walked for about another 15 minutes with absolutely nothing suitable in sight, no guard tower, no flat part of the wall, nothing. I think at one point Ally randomly looked over the wall, and lucky she did, because she found the only relatively cleared, flat piece of space available probably within a huge distance. The area was very small, maybe 12 square feet, but it was enough space for us to lay out sleeping bags and have a small fire against the bricks of the wall.

We made our own firepit using rocks, and there was plenty of dry firewood, and about 10 feet of brush between our camping space and a mountain cliff drop (at night, we all thought that the huge space of fog and mist looked like a lake, but no, it was simply a lot of sky in between the mountains ) We cooked our food using the stove we bought, and roasted my stolen corn in the fire. All in all, it was a pretty cozy campsite, the weather was perfect, the ground was dry, but lumpy. We heard animal noises that sounded like a cat, and we tried to remember if there were bobcats in the Chinese mountains. Our cell phones still worked (gotta love China on that one) so we texted friends, but got two contradictory reports. However, no bobcats were sighted that night.

Lost

We woke up in the morning around 7 o’clock. We originally planned to wake up at five (which is not so early since we went to bed at 8), but that didn’t happen. We packed up our things and started out close to 8. After a while we got to an almost fork in the road, or should I say, fork in the woods, for at that point we were walking on soil with trees everywhere with a few stones here and there to remind us that we were maybe on a Wall. Having been told to stay right, we go right. However, after walking for a while, the path just stops. There was no where else to go, and no wall to be seen. Befuddled, we back tracked, and this time decided to go left at the fork. After walking down that way for quite some time, the path also stopped. We were lost.

Overgrown Wall

Turn Around

At this point, we had to start making decisions. We were low on water, had no idea how far we had walked, nor how far we had left until Mutianyu. So, even though we said that there was no turning back, nor did we want to endure the Climb of Terror (CoT) again, it was clear that turning back was our only choice. Going down the CoT turned out to be easier than going up. Pete had brought a rope, so we decided to lower our bags first by rope. Andy climbed down first, than Jon went down to the midpoint, I went down and found a safe spot somewhere in the middle, and Pete and Ally both staggered themselves at the top, and thus we began the process of lowering bags. It was quite efficient actually, and we all made it safely.

We kept on hiking, and out of luck encountered a German couple on the wall. They had on sandals, so we asked how they had got here (they couldn’t have hiked all the way in sandals) and they said they had followed a path that was about thirty minutes from a main road and restaurants. I was so happy! Only thirty minutes to civilization? If we hadn’t met them, we would have walked another 1-2 hours back to where we started from. This was much easier. When our bedraggled group finally made it to the restaurant, it was so nice just to wash our hands and get the dirt out from under our fingernails. For some odd reason I had dirt smeared across my face which the whole group neglected to tell me about until after we had finished lunch. Thanks guys.

Where we came from

The Aftermath

As I said, we all survived with barest of injuries. However, it was so hard to walk afterward; my muscles hadn’t been worked like that in a long time and were really sore for days (they still kind of hurt a bit). Anyway, the whole trip was such an adventure, and ranks up there as one of my coolest life experiences. Pete video recorded it; I will have to get a copy to show you guys sometime.

The expedition group