The Great Wall

Whilst waiting outside at 6.30a.m, we'd managed to find street vendors selling breakfast - some deep-fried dough rather like the Spanish "churros", though perhaps less sweet, and something else that proved to be very tasty; something that was a cross between an omelette and a wrap, with various fillings. 

We were picked up outside the hostel and were the first customers in 22-seater coach. The lady guide introduced herself and took our money. She was a young woman in her early twenties from a rural village in Manchuria, come to the big city to make her fortune. When we gave her money, she was less than impressed with the fact that we had booked the tour for only Y120/head; she said that the true price was Y300/head. She went to great lengths to tell us that we should not talk to her other customers about the lower price we had got, or else her day would all of a sudden take a turn for the worse. We did not find such discretion to be a hardship.

The other customers were all collected from up-market hotels in a different part of town. There was an Australian man in his forties with his two teenage sons, who were stopping over in Beijing on a trip to Norway and other European destinations. There was a lone Chinese with his young son, and there was a Philipino family consisting of a pampered overweight brat of 10 or so and his immensely wealthy father and mother. Whilst the father and mother were harmless, the son had seen and done everything and was not afraid to tell anyone who wanted to listen all about it.

To say that our Chinese lady guide spoke at great length would be putting it politely. Using a microphone and cranking the PA right up, she addressed us about everything conceivable along the route. Sat in the front seat I did not feel able to so much as look out of the window, much less quietly read my book; I had to keep my eyes fixed on her in a kind of show of fake interest. Being Chinese rather than European, any nuance of my body language indicating that I had no slight interest in her tedious and over-loud commentary would have completely eluded her.

Our first stop was at the tombs of the Ming Emperors. This was a number of fine traditional chinese buildings set in gardens. Inside was one huge space with a giant statue of some king or other. The roof and walls were in solid wood; the roof beams must have been single trees, the pillars likewise, immense trunks, all of sandalwood. Overall it seemed to me that it was rather like what we might expect the inside of Solomon's Temple to have looked like. A truly immense space created from some very clever wood engineering. Outside the sky was blue and clear, green tree-covered mountains all around.

From the Ming tombs we went to what was billed as a "Jade factory". It was nothing of the sort, simply being a large shop (the Chinese know well that a fool and his money are easily parted, though we managed to resist easily enough) with an even larger canteen or refectory behind it. It was enlivened only the most wonderful globe in the foyer. This globe was over a metre across and made of all different kinds of semi-precious stones and jade. Each country was picked out in a different kind of material. Doubtless it too was for sale, and it would look great as the centre-piece in the foyer of some head offices, or perhaps a 5-star hotel. I could have looked at that globe for hours.
While we were there, we were taken through the refectory (which was half full of noisy Chinese families) into a smaller and better appointed area, obviously for westerners. Here we enjoyed a very good Chinese lunch, although it seemed impossibly early, barely even noon.

After lunch, a long drive through mountainous and scenic countryside to the Great Wall at Badaling. We were fast-tracked onto the cable car, and we were appalled by the queues of Chinese everywhere - at the top, at the bottom. Whilst the Great Wall was visually stunning, the sheer volume of Chinese tourists present meant that I found the whole experience somewhat unsettling to say the least. The only place I have ever visited that was anywhere near as busy was Venice. I'll go back to Venice; I shan't come here to Badaling again. The experience was compounded by the queue to get down again from the top - it was about forty minutes spent shuffling through a tunnel, which I didn't find particularly enjoyable.

After the Great Wall, we were driven back to the city to some form of private clinic, where we were going to be offered foot massages. It all looked a bit flaky to us, and as it was already 5pm and we were all feeling somewhat jaded and tired of our guide's endless cheerful commentary, we politely told mine hostess that we would make our own way back home without foot massages.This we did without too much difficulty, taking first a cab and then a long and complex metro ride.