Seeing the sights

Tienanmen Square, the Forbidden City, dead Mao-under-glass, climbing the Great Wall, Temple of Heaven, the giant pandas at the Beijing Zoo, silk factories, Great Hall of the People, the Lama Temple, the Confucian Academy (another product of the Mongol dynasty), walking through the not-yet-completed Olympic Village, and more.

I am completely sore from the great wall. I got a guide with a van, and two other folks joined me for the jaunt. . . as he stretched out to nap in the van while we climbed up the wall, he noted that, "Chairman Mao says that you are not a hero until you climb the Great Wall."

Well.

Just to make things interesting I challenged 19-year old Amy (a "Tazzie", if you can figure that one out) to a race. . . after the first hundred or so *very* steep steps I saw the tower come into view and figured that I would make it without dying. . . turned the corner, and say another section of about 300 steps. . . and then another 200 or so steps, mostly about 18-20 inches high. . . I swore that no matter what I was calling it quits at the next tower--needless to say the Tazzie was long gone ahead, and the other guy was having a hard time because he has a fear of heights, and at some stages looking down was a rather terrifying thing (lots of folks were coming down backwards, holding the steps as they carefully and slowly descended) . . . well, OK, I couldn't stop at the next tower, so I kept going and going and going. . . . . . I began to figure it was all a bad joke, and our guide knew that, in fact, the whole point of the wall was that it never ended (at least not for about 6,000 miles). Actually, it did finally stop. In the end I would say there were several thousand steps, perhaps about 3 kilometers in all.

Was it worth it (other than bragging rights or being a Maoist hero)? Sort of.

Then we wondered around the Olympic village, and then I led an expedition to find the skanky parts of the old city and the winding alleys that used to have all the gambling dens, opium, and other Jamie sorts of things.

Well, times they do change. The area of town that I was looking for is completely -- and very charmingly-- re-done in a sort of retro Susie Wong-esqu fashion, so that it actually looks like it did in the seedy days but in fact is now a fairly trendy shopping and bar district. So the beer that usually costs $2 in a bar or restaurant costs $4.50, the obligatory Bob Marley reggae bar is there, cute little paddle boats in the canal with couples paddling about, silk stores, souvenir shops, and the like. Oh well, when in Rome. . . so Amy, myself, and Ian from Florida proceeded to get completely trashed (me having discovered the local evil brew "er guo dao jiu"), ending up at a disco where "Olympic friendship" got me two free beers for showing my passport and they had go-go girls in short-shorts w/ white go-go boots. I taught the young-uns how to bargain (first rule: you can't get cheated if you remember that the correct price for anything is whatever you are willing to pay for it). It turns out that I am really quite good at this, since I really don't want anything (I have enough buddhas, art, curios, and other crap from my travels, Maki's family, my family, and whatever to rotate it in and out for years without repetition) and therefore just don't care about actually getting whatever is being sold and so end up with prices that surprise even me (typically about 15% of the starting price, and rarely end up going so low that it is too low).

I don't remember how we got back to our various hotels (I sort of remember that as the old guy I put all the student travelers in cabs and paid their way home), but I woke up with a big headache and calf cramps from the Great Wall.

A grand time was had by all.

Soaked in my Jaccuzzi for an hour.