BEIJING, CHINA

Several weeks ago I came to the awful realization that I would be in Beijing around the beginning of October, which isn't really the best timing. You see, October 1 is National Day, the holiday marking the anniversary of the People's Republic of China (kind of like our Fourth of July). And the week following National Day is called Golden Week. Most Chinese have the entire seven days off as a holiday, so basically it's one of the worst times for traveling and sightseeing in China. D'oh! Consequently, I wanted to hit the major sights before the start of the holiday, if possible. That's why I wasted no time in visiting the Forbidden City on my first day here, and set out to see the Great Wall today.

There are actually several sections of the wall that you can visit around Beijing, but Karine and I both thought it would be better to see a less "touristic" area, as the Europeans say, and one that hasn't seen a lot of modern restoration work. So we did a little research to find a suitable unrestored section, caught a taxi to the long-distance bus station, rode a bus several hours north of the city, then hired another taxi to take us the rest of the way there. On the way we passed some really nice terraced orchards, cornfields, small villages, and farmers driving donkey carts, until the landscape around us changed to rolling hills.

Finally we approached the wall, which we could see snaking its way over the distant hills just like in all those pictures--it really is an amazing sight. Our taxi driver dropped us off and agreed to wait for us, and Karine and I set out to scale the wall. It isn't as easy as you might think--first we had to walk on a winding path up to the wall, then squeeze through a little window in a watchtower, scale a set of nearly vertical crumbling stone steps (using our hands and feet), and finally climb up a rickety ladder to the top of the wall.

Once on top, though, it was an incredible feeling. We were lucky to be there on a beautiful blue cloudless day, with just a hint of October chill in the air--perfect weather. And best of all, there were no tourists! Amazingly, the only other people we encountered on top of the wall were a group of four Americans from Virginia, in China for a friend's wedding. Other than that, it was just me, Karine, and the wall itself, which is flat in places and unbelievably steep in others as it follows the ridgeline of the hills. Every so often along the wall there are watchtowers, which we snooped around in, but the best thing was just viewing the surrounding river valley from the top of the wall. It's a really beautiful area.

We walked (and sometimes climbed) along the wall for an exhausting couple of hours before turning around and heading back toward the car. On our way there we came across a really big praying mantis, maybe four inches long, right on top of the wall. We stopped to watch it and take a few pictures, then I had the bright idea of "introducing" it to one of the ubiquitous shield bugs crawling around. I instantly felt bad about that, because of course the mantis immediately pounced on the poor thing and began eating it alive. It was a scene of horrible carnage, and yet Karine and I couldn't stop watching as it noisily munched away. Ah, the drama of nature....

After making our way back to the car, our driver took us to a nearby restaurant, where we had a decidedly mediocre lunch. It was amusing to see some of the menu items, though--I noticed there were several donkey-meat dishes, including one called "donkey treasure" that was about ten times more expensive than anything else on the menu. (I asked later on, and sure enough, "donkey treasure" is exactly what you're thinking.)

Back in Beijing, Jin took us to a restaurant famous for its Beijing Duck (I guess they don't call it Peking Duck anymore, although "Beijing Duck" still sounds weird to me). Anyway, the duck was really good--you eat it wrapped in little pancakes, so it's like a duck burrito. Mmm. We then headed to one of Beijing's uber-trendy nightspots (who knew Beijing had uber-trendy nightspots?), the Face Bar, where we had various martinis and hobnobbed with the beautiful people, and then found our way to a dance club called Destination.

Where I had too much to drink.