Bai bai Beijing!

These last couple days have definitely been some of the crazier in my life, today included. Kellianne and I finished packing this morning, were a little sad that the directions said we couldn’t keep the amenities (thus the sad face with our cute hotel slippers), and did our RA duties of getting everyone in one place and turning in our room keys.
We then helped lead everybody with all their luggage through the bumpy streets and sidewalks, over bridges, and somehow through the 60-plus parked bikes back to the gas station to meet our bus again. Our tour guide today took us through what Zhao termed “real China.” “The Chinese workers, not the people in Beijing, Tsinghua Daxue, nor the Forbidden City, are the hope for the world.” In the big city there is of course still much evidence China is a developing country, but heading out into more rural areas you see lots of people working extremely hard, others sitting around outside playing games or waiting for customers, toddlers seated on their parents’ feet on beat-up mopeds, and many biking carts that look like they could fall apart any second containing their materials to bring to the market.







The Dragon Riders were headed to the best location to connect with the dragon spirit: Juyongguan. This is the section of the Great Wall deemed the best pass and was built the strongest in order to protect the order. This is the meeting place of two mountain ranges and where by patting one side of the wall, you’re saying ni hao to Mongolia!
A little bit of the Great Wall history and advice according to Zhao Laoshi:
- Whenever China has had its capital in the North, it has been strong as it’s the first defense against the “barbarians.”
- Masi, horse temples, have been built along the wall to thank the horses for their hard work.
- Mao also understood the importance of the Great Wall’s vitality to his reign as he had declared during the Long March, “ If we do not reach the Great Wall, we are not heroes.”
- “Bu yao paizhao, zoulu. Bu yao zoulu, paizhao.” Don’t take pictures while walking – do them one at a time because it’s too dangerous!

Along the lines of this last thought, going up to the Great Wall was a lot different than I had imagined because whenever I had seen pictures of people on the Great Wall, they had posed on flat areas. Much to my naïve surprise, climbing the Great Wall involved stairs, and tons of them! You had to have been really determined to try and invade China from this direction!
Our first order of business before tackling the stairs was a group Taiji (tai chi) session (on the flat section at the bottom, of course). Many in our group hadn’t learned Taiji yet (that will come in a couple weeks), and a few of us tried to remember what Zhao had taught us in his Daoist Health and Longevity class.


It was time to take the stairs. We had two choices: the “hard way” or the “easy way.” Not like climbing tons of stairs through the mountains can really be easy… But everyone chose the hard way, and we set off at our own pace. My preferred method was to climb a bunch of stairs, stop and take pictures of the beautiful surrounding scenery, and set off climbing again.






Hey, look, we touched Mongolia!


Looking off to the Mongolia side, we saw the world-famous six day traffic jam that my family had told me about even before I got to China! It’s still going strong!


As I promised, I took a picture with my silly purple giraffe cheater chopsticks from my teammate Sarah somewhere famous in China!


We climbed and climbed, with the four-brick stairs truly being the bane of our existence. It took serious concentration to climb because the stairs were all different heights! Some Dragon Riders powered through all the way to about seven towers, but many of us reached the fourth and felt we saw basically what we came here to see. The wind whipping up the sides of the wall dried our dripping faces as we rested inside the tower.








Rob posed his panda backpack precariously on the tower ledge for a photo.


Like many who reached this tower before us, we grabbed a sharp stone and carved our mark into the stones.




The Chinese government always looking out for its people.


As Emily put it well, “Going up is a physical workout, but going down is a mental workout.” It’s easier to let gravity do the work, but the stairs are so steep, and the different stair sizes comes into play again, so you really have to watch your step. Some stairs are even curved! If you decide to pause, it’s even more of a dangerous because your legs just start to shake uncontrollably! My legs didn’t even feel tired, and yet I couldn’t stop them from shaking. But we did it!






We hopped back into the air conditioned bus and said bai bai to Beijing. Zhao took us out for lunch near the beginning of our three-hour journey to Tianjin, his hometown.
First impressions:
- The third largest city in China (that nobody in the US has heard of…) seems to still be in a lower state of development than Beijing (which Zhao said was true – Tianjin apparently started developing first, but stalled and is only now starting to catch up again).
- The smog here is quite awful. We’ve started measuring the air quality by picking out visual landmarks in the sky, and on days they disappear from view, that’s cause to worry.
- It’s really cool to see the different mix of architecture here, though it was created through less than cordial result of European colonialism and concessions.
- It’s the biggest bike city in the world! I believe it. Alongside roads five lanes wide of cars are bike lanes packed about ten bikes wide with about fifteen per line at stoplights.


Outside of Nankai Daxue Dongmen (Nankai University East Gate).


Our dorm rooms are much more like I expected for our stay in China. Thus, less than stellar, but totally fine. Minus the fact that when Kellianne came out of our bathroom (which happens to be one room with a shower tacked on the wall, a toilet, a sink, and a mirror) the first time she said, “So the story is, I lifted up the toilet seat and it came off.” And minus the fact that it took us a while to get our appliances to work (the desk lamps that came with the room still don't...), but it's all good!





Tonight is for finally being able to spread out our stuff and decorate somewhat. Tomorrow we get to tour Nankai Daxue, where we’ll study the next two weeks!