Mutainyu, Sacred Way, and Night Market

We woke up bright and early as several calls from our tour guide let us know that we’d be leaving at 7 instead of 7:30 for our tour. Unfortunately, this meant that the normal schedule of having breakfast in the morning was dispensed because they had been late on breakfast every day so far, and hence asking for breakfast at 6:45 meant that it wasn’t done in time when we left at 7. Oops. We were the first two in the group of 8 that were taking the tour today, so we talked with our tour guide a bit then just chilled out on the mini-bus as we went to get the others. Unfortunately for us, the rest of our group was filled with tardy losers. The three Taiwanese people we picked up (one of which was a Kama-clone) were 10 minutes late, and the three French people made us wait for half an hour. Yeah, that was pretty awesome of them. So we finally got out to the wall around 9, but it was 9:15 before we were actually on our own, which left us with only an hour and 45 mins to be at the wall. We opted to take the cable car up to the wall, which was built on the spine of the mountain, way up from the valley. I really have no idea how people put this thing together. The ride up to the top really drove home just how high up we were, as at points it seemed to be nearly straight up. Once at the wall, we had options of going either left or right, the right had less people but took us down and back towards where we had come from, while the right was steeper and had more people, but was more off into the wilderness. We opted for the left, but it would have been fun to go both directions. The decision was worth it, and we realized if we pushed ourselves we could probably get to the top, and started out at a brisk pace. We stopped periodically along the way to either go on top of the watchtowers and snap pictures and such, but more or less kept the pace strong to get to the long steep climb that marks the final bit of the walk. Well, we got there, and just stared up this steep climb. We then began the hike, breaking it up by stopping every 50 steps. Yes, we counted them. It was 454, with the last 30 being the steepest and just brutal. Once you get to the top, you can look out and see how it just stretches on for miles in each direction. This is one of those things that really stands out so much more when you are there. The silence, the fact you can see for miles in each direction, numerous mountains are the scenery, with this almost sublime guardian running along the tops of the mountains for as far as you can see. You can certainly imagine the soldiers (of whom, at it’s peak, there were over 1 million stationed) gazing out from the top of one of these mountains into the mountains viewing themselves as the first line of defense of civilization against the unrelenting hordes of the north. (the kanji for China is 中国, or literally ‘middle’ ‘kingdom’. Given the cultural weight of China, you can see why they viewed themselves as the center of the world.) I guess the most important thing is that the great wall, especially out at Mutainyu, which is much less touristy, really helps drive home the magnificence of what still stands as one of mankind’s greatest architectural achievements.
We were ten minutes late heading out of here because the frenchies in our group opted to ignore the posted signs and continued on past the top into a restricted zone, which I couldn’t have cared less about, except that they were then subsequently late in getting back. Lamers. Alas, our Taiwanese counterparts were also late, helping drive home this theme. Ugh.
Next up we drove to lunch out near the Sacred Way. Lunch was great and also at a state jade factory / store. Basically it was a ploy to get us to buy jadeite wares, but no one was paying much attention as everyone, worn out from the trip on the wall, had fallen asleep on the bus (me included; Bethany is a given of course.) So we all just kinda zoned out, then enjoyed our lunch, served at one table with a big lazy susan, which was kinda funny because we had three groups who were forced to share with each other. It wasn’t a problem, but I just liked how it was assumed we were all the same group or friends or something.
After lunch we looked around the great jade things they had for sale. Bethany and I kept our eyes peeled for the most expensive things, finally noticing a huge female Buddhist monk for a cool $55,000. I also spotted some sexual jade figurines, which while engaged in intercourse, seemed to rather be practicing Cleveland’s finest acts. For $500, who wouldn’t want it? If it had been say, 50, I totally would have bought it. Instead we bought a neat little sphere that has two additional free moving spheres inside of it, all carved from a single piece.
Afterwards we went to the Sacred Way, the main pathway for the tombs of 13 of the Ming Emperors (14-mid 17th centuries). The main pathway was an interesting walk, but I would have enjoyed seeing at least one of the three opened tombs, but It was worth sacrificing this to get to go to Mutainyu instead of Badaling for the great wall. The walk was lined with many different important figures, from imperial magistrates to animals of importance and such. The final part had the huge entrance gate (we were going backwards) that had the great turtle that holds the world on its back with a huge pillar with Chinese written on it. It was a nice stroll for after lunch though.
We then drove on back to Beijing and had a last stop (that wasn’t mentioned as part of the tour) to a silk factory. We had a pretty good clue that this would be the same as the Jade factory, as in trying to get us to buy stuff. Bethany and I both gave each other looks when our tour guide had the audacity to say ‘some people thing this is as good as the great wall!’ (pfft, yea right. Maybe if they’re idiots they do.) The initial part was kinda interesting as they showed the stages they go through to get the silk, but alas the part we were most interested in was left out: how they get the silk to go from a cottony texture to the recognizable ‘silk’ feel. We then had to burn some time trying to get silk items sold to us, but basically we wandered around laughing at how terrible the designs were on the silk items. One interesting part to note though, was that after our little info-mercial on how silk is made, they basically told us to take a stab at trying to stretch the silk out over a large square base to then go inside of a blanket. So we line up, two on each side to try and take this piece that’s the size of say, a pizza box, and stretch it out to the size of a blanket. It’s pretty obvious that if you go slowly and everyone works together, it shouldn’t be impossible to make this work. Well, she tells us to go and we all start pulling out a bit, but then she stops us and lets us get readjusted and then actually lets us go at it. Well, everyone but Bethany and I started pulling too fast, the highlight being the Kama-clone just tearing it like he’s trying to rip-start a lawnmower. The icing on the cake was that the lady then went on to tell us how we did a terrible job and we couldn’t get a job at the place (paralleled by our tour guide telling us how we’d do this and if we did it well we could get a job at the place, which was met by half-hearted chuckles, as in: “Gee, I’d sure love to work at a silk factory in Beijing! That’d be a swell job!”) and it was just despicable. Well, she said all this in the exact same tone for everything else she had said, which just made it hysterical. I wanted to call her Miss Robot.
We then made our way home, Bethany and I being the last to be dropped off; going to our hotel and doing some preparation for our next stops before we took off for the night market. On our way to the night market, we took a way a little off from the main path to go through some shopping areas. Along this way we found a kebab place out along the alley (off the alley we were already in) and decided to pick out some stuff. We put it in a basket and handed it to them to cook, and then went inside to wait for it to finish. We didn’t know we’d be going in, but it was all right. We got quite a few looks as we waited for a place to sit since it was full; we used this as a good sign that we were in place that doesn’t get many foreigners. The food was dirt cheap, and probably had dirt on it, but it tasted fantastic. They brought us some silkworms with our food, which we hadn’t asked for, but it was an additional $1.75, and they were seasoned really well so it was fine. Afterwards we continued on to the night market area. This place had a ton of tourists, many of whom were Chinese. There was a wide selection of food, and while a bit overpriced it was still totally reasonable. Being a bit hungry still, I snagged some sheep hearts and something else that both tasted great. After this we FINALLY got the candied crab apples and some candied strawberries. Frankly, I have no idea why we don’t do this in America. Basically, you take a fruit, and dip it into melted rock candy, encasing the fruit in a shell of sugar. The crab apples are a popular traditional Chinese version, but I’m partial to the strawberries. We then continued on, noting some of the specialties such as sea urchin, worms, cicadas, and scorpions. On the way back from the other end, I decided to go ahead and try some of the scorpion. I settled for a stick of 3 little ones, not only because they weren’t quite as imposing as the big black ones, but they were also 80% cheaper :-P. Turns out that they were pretty darn good! Bethany even took a stab at one and liked it! (basically there was so much grease and salt on it that it tasted like a French fry.) But still, that’s something new to notch in the book. :-P While giving it a shot, a Chinese girl stopped and watched me eat it and then looked at me and gave me the thumbs-up sign as a question and I nodded and said yep while giving an OK. She grinned pretty big at that. Gotta love cultural exchanges.  We then got back to the other end and were deciding what our last candied fruit would be; all while being bombarded by the guys in the last stall trying to get us to buy from them. They were just screaming out. “STRAWBERRY! I LOVE YOU!” “STRAWBERRY! FREE! FREEEEEE!!” So Bethany and I go up there and buy a strawberry and kiwi one, and the guy holds out a crab apple one and says ‘’FREE!’’ and so I reluctantly take it, and then we pay him the 15 for the berry and kiwi, and then he says that it isn’t enough cash. I hold up the apple one and go ‘free?’ and am met with ‘’NOT FREE!!!!’’ and I go ‘’psssh” and give it back to him. Also one guy asked us where we were from when we were getting it and Bethany goes ‘America’ and he replies, ‘oh, very beautiful!’ We made our way back home and settled in after a long day. But a very fun one.