Peking/Beijing Duck

so on the way back from the Wall we stop at the nearby Ming Tombs, which were .... well, the dudes aren't even in the tombs anymore, so like whatever. it's still hot out. we eat ice cream.

so it's our last dinner together and most of us decide to split from the group because when in beijing, one eats peking duck. we head for the most famous peking duck restaurant in all of peking, founded in 1864 and so famous even kings and queens have eaten here! i bet yao ming has too!

i love duck, but i got a little freaked out at their picture menu (popular with foreigners), when i saw they served the duck in phases like first the deep fried webbed feet, then the neck soup, then the duck hearts, then the duck part of the duck. i guess that's just an 'option' and you don't have to have it that way.

so we stick with tradition and just order our own peking duck (it's just me, poom, ann, taka and brett). our waiter suggests some appetizers and we cave. we get our bill before the food arrives and it's like less than $15 per person so we order more stuff.

the perfectly roasted and glazed duck is wheeled over on a cart and presented to us tableside as a chef in a crisp white coat starts carving it. the waiter shows us how to properly eat it all up:

1. get 'pancake' (looks like a white crepe about the size of a small corn tortilla)
2. get 2-3 pieces of sliced duck with chopsticks
3. dip duck pieces in thick soy sauce (consistency of ketchup) and 'paint' the tortilla with them, speading the soy sauce ketchup evenly
4. add onion slices to top of duck slices and place in middle of tortilla, fold up like a burrito and eat!

it's totally fun and you can eat without chopsticks, which is the best part. we are presented with the duck's card of authenticity, complete with his serial number and farm info on where he was raised! i sorta feel bad about eating him, but not really. it's the best meal of the trip.

the wall ... and the wailing

so july 3 is is "The Day" ... we're going to badaling about 2 hours north of beijing to climb the wall. this is what we've all been waiting for ... it's the reason we decided to extend our trip. since our original tour was only scheduled to cover the southern china region, and since the wall is only located on the northern border, we had a whole country to cross to get here. would it be worth it?

to start with it's another scorching day ... temps in the triple figures and humidity not far behind. this section of the wall, as with most sections, were built high atop the mountains that separate china from mongolia. as we're approaching, my eyes are glued on the lush green mountains looking for any sign of concrete. i see some straight ahead and can't contain my excitement. 'is that the wall?!?!? is that the wall?!?! our tour guide doesn't share my enthusiasm and utters the chinese equivalent of 'like, doi' while the rest of the gang plays it cool .... but i know they're all excited too.

we pay our entrance fee and take a bazillion photos before we even start to climb. it's so hot outside (by now it's about noon) we all stock up on water and i buy a nifty green pearly parasol to help keep the sun off me. there's no shade on the wall.

the walls looks like it goes straight up the mountain and for the first time i realize it's all steps. i thought you climbed a staircase or a ramp to get up to the wall, then you just walked along the wall ... nope. you climb stairs AND a ramp to get to the wall and then the whole damn route is steps. big steps. imagine what the stairmaster in hell looks like and that's how big the steps are.

this is going to be a doozy. there's about 5 stations you can see as the wall heads up the mountain and i wonder how far i'll make it. you can see others climbing, and most only make it to the first station before turning around and coming back. i wonder if it will satisfy me enough to just be *on* the wall ... or if i really needed to do all that climbing. peer pressure got the best of me and after stalling about 15 minutes checking out the souvenier stand .... drinking water .... fixing my umbrella .... tying and retying my shoes ... only poom is left so we decide to head up together.

the steps are even steeper and higher than they look.... and they're worn down in the middle from years of wear making them grossly uneven. this is fertile ground for sprained ankles. i am winded by the time we climb the stairs and the ramp to just get to the wall itself. but there's old ladies ahead of me and if they can do it ....

i keep climbing and can't help but wonder how i can do 40 minutes on the stairmaster at the gym and can't handle 5 minutes of stairs here. i guess they're not really "stairs" ... that sounds too dainty. these are the huge stone boulders from hades! the umbrella helps as a shield, but sweat is still dripping down my face. in streams. when is the last time you had streams (not droplets, not beads) running down your cheeks and dripping off your nose? or was i just crying .... then i felt something crawling on my leg and reached down ... but it was just all the sweat dripping down them too.

if there was one thing that made me happy, aside from finally being able to cross this off my life's to-do list, it was that i wasn't the only one having trouble -- everyone was suffering. we were all miserable .... and we had all paid to do this! what a scam! i thought this might be what childbirth is like ... everyone is miserable going through a tortuous experience experiencing such great depths of physical pain and mental exhaustion ... but then there is that great reward at the end and the misery turns to triumph, pride and accomplishment. so i keep going.

i make it to the first landing and contemplate turning back down, but the this is where everyone turns around and heads back down. i head up to the next station and take a little breather. the steps are a lot less crowded up here so it makes it easier to take little breaks. i've been climbing for about 20 minutes now and the rest of the group is ahead of me too far to see.

i head out for the third station and start to feel woozy. i have only fainted one time in my life (9th grade, mrs. perrigo's front yard) and if i didn't rest it would be two times. not wanting to collapse on a great wall of stone in foreign land, i rested. i made it up to the fourth landing, but knees were shaking, face was sweating, eyesight getting spotty. i needed to sit so i plopped down next to a chinese boy (left) and a father and daughter from miami (right). we were all pooped. i stayed there until a local woman approached the garbage can and instead of throwing her empty water bottle away, hurled. she was about 3 feet away from me, so i didn't get any riccochet. i felt bad for her, but was glad it wasn't me.

a few minutes later the kid next to me spit. everyone spits everywhere in china. it's totally disgusting, but i wasn't too alarmed. but when someone does it that close to you it gets your attention and creeps you out all the more. but that was just a prelude to what came next ... which was his lunch of chicken and rice. a chunk landed on my shoe and i pretended not to care. the kid starting crying, as kids do when they throw up, and i felt really bad for him. nothing is sadder than a sick kid. it made me wonder about how important was it to climb this damn wall anyway -- people were miserable, puking, passing out -- and for what?

it made me think of the wall in a whole new way ... as an ancient form of chinese torture. not for the enemy but for their own soldiers who had to patrol it. as someone pointed out when we asked why it was built in the first place (to protect against the mongolians), weren't the mountains enough of a barrier? i mean who was going to climb these mountains (torture enough) and *then* mount an attack? anyway, my brain was getting foggy and the puke smell baking in the sun got to me, so i had no choice but to head up to the next station.

at this landing there was a lookout ledge and i sat down here for the next hour. there was a nice breeze and i got a chance to cool off. i was about halfway up the wall and i knew the others would have to come back down this way, so i waited for them and people-watched. there is great people watching here .... tourists from all over ... experiencing the universal language of pain.

a woman was practically crying as she descended with her husband .... her calfs were cramping and she was in pain. another guy totally bit it descending, which appears to be even more challenging than the ascent. great.

the olympics are coming!

beijing is getting ready to host the 2008 olympics and the whole damn country is fired up about it. you know they're serious when 'beijing 2008' fake merchandise is the first stuff you're hit with each time you get off the bus.

everywhere you turn they're trying to sell you bucket hats or baseball caps with the pirated logo for $5 ... but we all decline ... repeatedly ... and save our olympic souvenir shopping for the officially sanctioned store at the airport. we feel our money is better spent that way.

by the way, after seeing the pageant the students at Jilin University put on for us, and the little cultural show at the miniature china theme park ... and the acrobatics show in shanghai ... all i can say is set your tivos now for the opening ceremonies ... i am sure they will be like nothing we've ever seen.

big trouble in little china

so we're at tienemman square walking around at this local approaches us trying to sell a 10-pack of postcards for 20 yuan (about $2.75). poom and i have partnered on buying the 10-packs, splitting costs and the pack. but as per usual before any purchase in this fascinating land, one must bargain.

we get him down to 10 yuan and start flipping through the cards to make sure they're not all of the same thing or from the '50s. he starts getting a little nervous and we sense he wants to close the deal and fast. being MBA students, we naturally pounce and offer 10 yuan for 2 packs. he amazingly agrees and as i'm holding the cards digging in my purse a police officer approaches ... gently puts his arm around the peddler ... and guides him away to the paddy wagon in the middle of the square. it was the most powerfully silent and awkward encounter i've ever witnessed ... the peddler's head just dropped ... the chinese policeman guided him away with the 'come on, son' shoulder grip ... and i'm left holding the contraband he made no effort to recover.

my first instinct was to run, my second was to take a photo. brett, a fellow traveller, said he was advised to never take photos of police activity in other countries ... but that sounded like totally boring and so not me. so we compromised and i took a photo of the kid being put in the paddy wagon, but i didn't zoom in.

'tanks' for the memories.

beijing, home of the non-massacre

this is a starkly different city than shanghai ... and i like it. it's the political center of china ... their washington DC. it's also way more historical and there's great effort to preserve that. shanghai is a little more cosmopolitan, like it's trying to be NYC. anyway, in beijing, buildings aren't allowed to be over a certain height, so things like mao's mosoleum and the national art galleries appear more prominent.

the city layout is also interesting. the center of the city is considered the forbidden city and tienemman square (ajacent to each other), and the rest of the city surrounds this site in rings. i think there are six rings now, so addresses and locations are like 'we're in the fourth ring' or 'we're in the second ring.'

i am determined to get along with this tour guide and am pleased he greets me first and compliments my brazilian Kappa shirt -- yay! a sports fan! we'll get along. his name is 'vincent' and we immediately go over the itinerary to make sure we're hitting all of the spots we want in our short time frame (another plus!). our first stop is tienneman square, definitely a priorty on everyone's list. he drops us off and lets us wander around for a half hour. now, at this point of the trip you can probably tell i'm getting a little punchy .... but the square is so big and i wanted to know exactly where the massacre of 1989 happened. that footage of the kid getting run over by the tank still burns in my head.

'so this is where the massacre happened, right? which part'
'there was no massacre. that is all misunderstanding.'
'really?'
'yes. i was here that day and nothing happened. i was here in the morning and then came back in the evening. nothing happened.'
'oh, i thought we heard there was some trouble with student protesters and the military? maybe some deaths?'
'oh no, nothing like that. and i am not a Party member, but i was here that day and nothing like that happened.'
'so what did happen that day? what did you see?'
'well ... there were lots of people, but everyone was in control. there was nothing out of control.'
(i give skeptical look)
'well maybe there were a couple accidental deaths. but they were not massacres, just accidents.'

i decided to leave it at that and wander around on our own. the international students really didn't want to press the issue further and tried to explain to me that they thought the kid actually got out of the way of the tank and was never actually run over.