That Was Quite a Long 3 Days

So, tonight, today for y'all, is the end of our three day tour provided by the Olympic Committee. Two days ago we went to some wall, apparently, according to some people, it might be considered Great.

That's right, guys and gals, I climbed up the Great Wall Saturday. First of all, I'll say that Saturday was the FIRST TRULY BLUE SKY DAY we have had since I arrived. It was perfect. The humidity went away, the pollution was gone and it was nothing but sun and blue skies to escort us to the Wall.

The Great Wall is part of this giant community that has been built around it. It has homes, but mostly a lot of restaurants...including a Starbucks. For anyone who knows me, they'll know that this is like an oasis in the middle of a mocha-less desert.

When you enter the Great Wall part of it all, you wait. And wait. And wait some more. We waited for what was, supposedly, an abnormally long amount of time because the President of Mexico was there and half of the wall that is open to tourists was temporarily shut down so he and his security detail could get up to the Wall safely without all of the other people around.

Well once we finally got past an initial staging area that felt similar to what I imagine a sardine feels like, we got some clean air and started our descent up the Wall.

Let it be said that, not to toot my own horn, but getting up the Great Wall is no easy feat. It's incredibly steep, switching from wicked inclines to steps that are probably a foot to a foot and-a-half high. There are railings, but they're low and not very useful. Combine these obstacles with a gorgeous yet brutal, beating sun and you have a heck of a climb.

But, after many water breaks and stoppages to make way for locals and their umbrellas, which are just begging, it seems to poke your eye out, we made it to the top. Oddly enough, the top of the Great Wall is incredibly small. It was really just meant as a lookout point, it seems, so all of these people who have been making this trek up there are, all of a sudden, crammed into an extremely tiny area.

A group of us, once we got to the top, sang "Hail Purdue!" Video of it will hopefully be up soon.

After the Great Wall, and lunch, we visited the Ming Tombs. The majority of emporers and empresses from the Ming Dynasty are buried there. Again, the tombs suffered a similar fate to some of the other things we've seen: they've been really overdeveloped. What might have been a very cool look into the Ming emporers became kind of cheapened when you walked down an "ancient" courtyard and a woman is selling ice cream right next to you.

Skip to today, which, going into it, promised to be a somewhat mixed bag. We started it off with the Summer Palace, which was built in 1750 as, obviously, a summer home for the emporer. But, in its long history, it has been burned and pillaged and rebuilt, and then added onto and developed for tourism purposes. The odd part of the Summer Palace is that 75% of it is water, a giant lake, more specifically. So, in the couple of hours of free time we had to use, I had some calligraphy done, which looks very cool, and then me and a group of the Aussies took a trip of a boat down this little alcove of the lake.

After lunch, we went to a botanical garden that, shockingly enough, is on the site of a old palace...that had been burned...and then developed for tourism. (Are you sensing a theme here?)

Dinner.

Then, a Chinese Opera. This was something that I wasn't sure if I would look forward to and my suspicions were...correct. I mean, the Chinese Opera is something, supposedly, steeped in tradition and is full of meaning and history. But, honestly, it didn't come through in what we watched.

Firstly, it was hard to see the screens with loose translations of what the characters were saying, so we missed out on a ton of what was going on in the play. But, we caught the gist...and it still didn't really help.

Secondly, there was one woman, playing some sort of princess that had a truly grating voice. Nails on a chalkboard is an understatement.

So, the opera was kind of a bust...BUT, it was still very cool to see and, if nothing else, a pretty fun story.

So, that is the end of our three day extravaganza with BOCOG and our tour guide Henry. Tomorrow, Monday, is a free day, so I think there is some laundry in my future and then, tomorrow night, a taping of a Chinese talk show.

Talk to you all soon,

Phil