what a grand, spectacular wall they have here! great, even...

photos to accompany this blog entry can be found on the "chinese madness" entry from a day or two ago. enjoy the writing, then peruse the pix...ben

i was surprised when my mom told me, seven or eight months ago, that she would be interested in getting a passport and leaving america for a few weeks. it turns out, however, that among the places she's most wanted to see all her life have been china's great wall, the terracotta warrior in xian, and angkor wat near siem reap, cambodia.

we checked the great wall off that list yesterday; the other two shall be similarly completed within the next few weeks.

i'd like to add that i am uber-proud of my mom for being here. she arrived tuesday afternoon and we've had 4.5 days here already in beijing, and there've been some cultural hiccups (to be expected), but she's hanging in there and has already shown a good amount of gumption just in coming here at all. i mean, china is not the easiest place i've been to before. it's not like her first international trip was to france or somewhere like that: it's very, very different here, and it means a lot to me that she came here, and that she's doing better every day, and hopefully making great memories that will last a lifetime.

mushy stuff aside and back to the story. we opted for a package tour from our hotel yesterday morning, so a minibus driver picked us up just before eight in the morning. we set out to pick up a few more tourists: a young dutch couple and five australians. we fought our way through the brual beijing morning traffic, all the while hearing interesting tidbits about the city, both past and present, from tony, our heavily accented but very knowledgeable guide.

these tours are a bit of ruse, in that they offer air conditioned comfort and whatnot all for one affordable price, but you also have to stop at predetermined shopping stores, usually government-owned and sponsored, to shop for jade or silk or other knick-knacky stuff that i could care less about. oh well, the stops weren't for that long - and i'd brought a book - and mom ended up buying a cool jade christmas tree ornament that will always reminder her of the time she was, for some odd reason, in china.

we stopped for awhile at the emporers' tombs, where leaders of the past had been laid to rest for millenia, guarded by huge, elaborately detailed stone animals and guardians. it was already quite hot and humid at 10 a.m. and i was dripping sweat by the time i'd walked the 1.5 mile pathway, covered by weeping willows from which emited the sounds of thousands of unseen insects. i was happy when, at the conclusion of this section of the trip, the driver said we'd have time to rest before our next stop, as the drive would take an hour and a half.

we ate lunch after the second of the two predetermined stops at government stores and didn't make it to the great wall, about 120 KM northeast of beijing above a small town called matinyahu, until 1:30 p.m. matinyahu was further away, but the guidebooks and online all said that it was preferable to the more heavily touristed parts of the wall most close to beijing, near the city of badailing.

we parked at matinyahu and the guide told us to be back to the bus by 3:30, so after all that driving and forced shopping, we only ended up with two hours at the wall. but that was actually enough, considering how tired the climb made me.

i'd like to report that i jogged with ease up to the great wall of china, which ran along the peaks of the mountain in the matinyahu section, but the truth is much less impressive. in fact, it's downright pathetic, although i do take some pride in the fact that i made it at all.

not to the top, mind you, but to the ropeway station. in my defense, the station was like halfway up the mountain,and the pathway leading to it was paved with very uneven cobblestones, and it went up and up and up, and on and on and on, at like at a very steep angle. i had to pause a few times on the way up, and many people passed me by, and my 55-year-old mother was waiting for me at the top of hte mountain by the time i'd huffed and puffed my way up there, moving slowly, like a semi truck ascending a steep grade in low gears at a slow speed, but i made it.

i was pouring sweat by the time i reached the base of the aerial tramway station, and was quite nonplussed when i found that it had four flights of stairs to get to where you board the ropeway. i chatted it up with some guys from an egyptian tour group who had also had their asses kicked by the walk up to the station (bear in mind that the fitter among visitors were hiking half an hour up a zillion stairs to the top of the mountain).

my knees were killing me and my pulse was beating pretty good as i rode up five minutes in the cable car, over pine forests, towards the wall, which snaked away over distant peaks in both directions. then i got to the top and found -- guess what! -- more stairs! darn! i really need to hit the stairmaster when i get home, because i was dying as i leaned against the great wall and looked for my mom. i found her quickly, however, and she told me she was proud of me for making it because regardless of my fatness, it was a good haul up to the station.

the wall itself was spectacular, but you've seen it before, and i'm getting tired (nearly midnight here), so i'm gonna cut this entry off pretty soon. mom and i took some photos, admired the views, talked about how the wall had taken 900 years to build and stretched for thousands of miles, and then we took the ropeway back down.

coming down the mountain wasn't as bad as going up had been, although i had some pretty good jelly legs going by the time i made it (without tripping, much to my delight) down to the parking lot, as trucks that go slowly up grades must also use a lot of breaking power to keep the load under control on the way down.

all in all, a great day. anytime you can see something like the great wall, it's a good day, but more than actually seeing the wall, i liked the look of excitement i saw on my mom's face as we explored it. it made all the climbing, all the stairs, all the sweating and sore knees, more than worth it.

i'd do it all again in a heartbeat.