The Great Wall of China

Hunter, Joergen, and AK

Our trusty tour guide and Chinese teacher, Hunter, took us out of Beijing on our first excursion today. We took a one and a half hour bus ride to The Great Wall.  The wall actually stretches 6,500 km in length, but we went to the closest access from Beijing. The city of Beijing is extremely flat, being basically desert terrain. As we traveled down the highway, we left the city and crossed lush farmland, and finally entered some mountainous terrain.  I was surprised to discover that we would need to take a chair lift up the mountain to get to the wall--it is a rocky, wild, and undeveloped landscape.  Apparently, it is also possible to hike up a trail, but it is a hefty climb.  As today was hot, muggy, and humid, not to mention being a heavy, smoggy day, the group opted for the chair lifts. 

The ticket booths and entrance to the chair lifts were a complete tourist trap--a  beehive of shops and stalls hawking souvenirs, fruit, and drinks.  I was delighted to discover that as we started climbing up in the chair lift, we left the tourism behind and seemed to enter a completely different world. For miles around us, as far as we could see, we were surrounded by mountainous forests. At the top of the mountain and snaking over the ridge, loomed The Great Wall.  Once at the top, we could wander freely along the wall, climbing up in the battlements and stopping to take photographs. It is truly an amazing feat of architecture, and awe inspiring  to realize that we were standing on a structure that was completed around 221 BC.

It's a Small World

   We have traveled half way around the world to Beijing. There are 1.3 billion people in China--what are the chances that I would run into someone that I know?  This morning, as we were riding the chair lift up to The Great Wall, we passed people riding down in the opposite direction, most of whom were Chinese.  Joergen and Lars were riding one chair lift ahead of AK and me.  Suddenly, I hear someone shouting out Joergen's name--in one of the chair lifts going down the mountain was a blond woman, waving and laughing. It was Jolene Brister, who taught with us at Lincoln School in Argentina!  She has just moved to Beijing as well, to teach at the other international school, ISB (International School of Beijing).  I knew she was in Bejing, but we had not yet had a chance to get together. Unbelievable!