Saying Goodbye to China

We found ourselves on a 40 hour train ride from Kunming to Beijing. What do you do on a 40 hour train ride? Lots of things like wander up and down the train looking for a food cart (wait no, you aren't supposed to do that. I got yelled at in Chinese for doing that, at least I think that is what I was being yelled at for). I slept and read an entire book. I slept and played Scrabble. I slept and watched China go by the window- China is crowded, really crowded. There really are hordes of people everywhere. There were a lot of people on our train. We had a hard sleeper, which means that there are three bunk bed levels, and you can't actually sit upright unless you are on the bottom. Unfortunately, we were not. There were Chinese businessmen on the bottom. On the top were teenage boys who proceeded to get drunk and smoke on a train with windows that don't open. Other highlights were buying a bowl of rice and veggies in a ceramic bowl at a train stop and realizing that the ceramic bowl was disposable and to be thrown away after single use, and well, sleeping. We did that a lot.

What's the one thing that you have to do when you go to China? And no, the answer is not eat dog. The correct answer is visit the Great Wall. So in Beijing, we went to see the wall. We had met a woman from LA at our hostel who was going there in the morning, and she provided us with a free ride (and entrance tickets and a guide too) because a friend of a friend of a friend was showing her around. We had been hoping to go to one of the less touristy sites, but we went wherever we were taken, and it turned out to be a very interesting experience (as everything in China is). From Badalang, you can either go north or south on the wall. Our guide took us up the north side, where all of the Chinese people were going. There were lots of ginormous tour groups. The throngs of people were going up to the Hero Stone, which is this rock at the highest point with a Mao quote about not really being a man until you have climbed the Great Wall. It's pretty obvious that this means something we don't understand to the Chinese people. At the top we were surrounded with enthusiastic Chinese people yelling as usual (they yell A LOT in China). People were posing for all sorts of pictures so then I started taking pictures of them too. I justify it by thinking about all of the random people that were taking pictures of me because I have blue eyes (which happens a lot). Then we walked to the south side of the wall and we were met considerably smaller crowds but of western people not Chinese. Since this apparently is where all the westerners go, so do the Looky-looky-people trying to sell you things. It was an interesting contrast to see. Chinese tourists and then western tourists.

After that, we left China. We said goodbye to the constant lugies, the pollution, the yelling, the masses of people. Goodbye China. I am glad that I went there, but I was glad to leave.