I had the unbelievable pleasure and good fortune to visit the Great Wall of China right before heading to the Philippines for Month 11. It’s one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and on just about everyone’s bucket list.
And I got to go!
It was just as breathtaking as you’re imagining right now. Maybe even more.
But let me begin a little earlier, and tell you about the trip itself
Chaney, Christine, and I woke around 4:30 am one cooooold and dark morning, and left just after 5 to make a short trek to the metro. A quick five minute ride later, and we were supposed to have an easy jaunt to the Beijing North Railway Station.
The blog we read about how to get to the Wall said that the Railway Station was on the southeast corner. Of what, you might ask? We dunno, that’s all it said. So when we got off the metro and were trying to figure out which exit to take (of the million options we had- I mean, it is Beijing after all), we decided the obvious choice was the southeast exit.
Well, we were 100% wrong.
We ended up on the southeast corner of the largest intersection on the planet. Even larger than the ones you see in movies based in LA. There seriously must have been 30 or more lanes of traffic, going 15 or more different directions on several over- and under-passes, a tunnel, and a straight-a-way. It was a little terrifying to say the least, even at 5:30 in the morning. So we start to run, and attempt to hop over a reeeeally high fence in the middle of one of the highways, but decide it’s too high and run the length of it instead. Then we got lost on a different corner of the intersection, and had to ask a passing group of what appeared to be college-aged guys how to get across the next part of the intersection to arrive at the Railway Station and, by this time, we were in a serious rush to get there on time. As the trains leave in hour-and-forty-five-minute increments, we weren’t too eager to let this first one slip by.
The guys end up pointing us in the right (and safe direction, Mom), and we arrive with barely a moment to spare. We grab our tickets and speed walk into the enormous waiting room, only to continue speed walking all the way through it and down a 400 meter jetty to our waiting train.
It’s a high speed train.
I’ve been waiting all month long to ride one of these babies! I read about them in some article some time ago, and I have been SO STOKED to get a chance to ride one.
So we hop on and (I) wait in serious anticipation for the ride that’s to come.
…
We ended up not going past driving speed. Maybe not even that fast. It was disappointing to say the least. But World Race did warn me not to have expectations… I just didn’t know it applied to ALL THE THINGS. But I suppose now it does.
Our “high speed” train arrives at our destination “Badaling” a little over an hour after we departed from Beijing. Even though we know we have about an 800 meter walk up a slight incline, it looks glorious outside. We’re in the heart of a mountain range, and all the trees are in the middle of changing color for fall, my favorite time of year. And because it’s so early in the morning, the sun is just now rising above the mountains, and filling the opposite side of the range with bright golden beams that make the mountains glow. To the best of my ability to describe it, it’s awe-inspiring.
We walk up the hill toward the wall, and when we arrive, the village-y area looks a little bit like Niagara Falls (the American side) with tons of little kiosks and flags and energy.
But the Wall loomed, so on we walked, past the souvenirs and coffee shops and all the places that weren’t open because it was still SO EARLY.
We purchase our tickets, stop at a really gross squatty potty area (where a mom with a little boy cut in front of me!!), and prepare to head inside.
Just a few feet inside the entrance, we meet up again with the mom of the little boy from the bathroom. She starts talking excitedly in Mandarin to me, and then pulls out her camera and points at her little boy with a smile. Taking that totally as my cue, I whip out my award-winning smile and crouch down a the little boy who has been making the cutest eyes at me for the last minute or so, and we take a few photos.
This is gonna be a GREAT day!
We spent the next couple hours climbing up literal mountains (sometimes having to hang on desperately to rails because the slope was so steep our shoes were slipping). The sights were breathtaking. Sections of the Wall were spread all throughout the region we were in, you could see them racing up mountains as far the eye could see. Some of the sections were even broken down, as is what happens to thousand-year-old things. It was a really cool experience, feeling like I was part of some majestic history. If you ever have a chance to go and see it- really, you should take the opportunity. It’s simply unlike anything else you will ever see, and it’s worth the time and energy to go.
my lovely co-adventurers
So now that we had seen and breathed in and immersed ourselves in the beauty of man-made meeting God-made, we decided it was time to have a little fun. Photobombing fun.
It was all too easy! We probably passed (or brushed shoulders with) thousands of people in the two and a half hours we were there. And 99% of them were Asian. So we- the strange, translucent-colored people, were pretty popular. We were stopped quite often to be asked to take photos with, and when we weren’t there were still more people stopping to take selfies in the middle of the walkway on the Wall. It was only a matter of time before we (mostly me, I shamefully admit), started pausing for a microsecond, with the deuces up, to bomb photos. To defend myself, it was mostly teenagers and younger folks (as I didn’t think the older generation would get too much of a laugh from some random person Where’s Waldo-ing in their precious sightseeing photographs). The most fun photobombs were with student groups; it’s cake to slip in amongst a group of fifteen teens and not really have any attention paid to it. But, boy, when they check those pics out later, they are going to get an awesome surprise!
haha, gotcha!
A lot of times, though, when the person taking the photos would see the bomb in-action, they would take their camera down, smile and wave you into the picture in a legitimate way, posing with the person. Then they would switch, and you would take another photo. Then other people would see you posing for pictures with people, and a queue would begin, with sometimes six or seven people waiting to take their photo with you. I think Chaney and Christine were a little annoyed with the attention, thinking it was a little bit of an intrusion into our day, but I had the BEST DAY. I felt like a celebrity, with really nice, smiling paparazzi hailing and lauding me. Or perhaps a group of my biggest fans were waiting to have their dreams come true: a picture with ME!
just a few examples of how cool i am
All in all, I completed 11 successful photobombs, and 26 different individuals or groups of people asked to have their pictures taken with us. It was a blast! A whole morning dedicated to seeing a Wonder of the World, capped with the most hysterical game you can play with strangers.
I’m really, really blessed.
you know i took an obligatory yoga photo here
