"I Climbed the Great Wall" again...

...but this time the section of the wall was much more treacherous, exciting, and less touristy, BY FAR. The stretch of wall we climbed started from Jin Shan Ling to Si Ma Tai. We were SUPPOSED to stay the night on the wall and be able to see the sunrise in the morning, but that plan didn't work out because the government intervened at the last moment and told us that we weren't allowed to for security reasons.

What do you think people around the world would think of this headline "150 UC students missing on the Great Wall of China" right before the Olympics start. Right? Either way, China is looking out for its ass before this Olympics goes down, I've been seeing a lot of governmental clamp down and massive campaigns to clean the environment.

Needless to say, we were forced to spend the night in the hotel, something that everyone had dreaded. This hotel was the ONLY hotel in Jin Shan Ling, therefore it could be as shitty as it wanted and people would still pay to stay there. I mean hell, we got access to the wall at 4 am in the morning (this was the EAP compromise for not allowing us to actually sleep on the wall). So the rooms, let me describe. I was enfuriated when I saw the option for housing that my other friends got, a nice room with nice walls, electricals working and bathrooms that were even better than the apartments that we stay in at BNU. Not only that, but they had their own living room area. It's ok though, they shared it with smokers and the complex was also really far away from the restaurant, which also wasn't really that great.

Our room was dank, smelly, and very spartican. Two beds, 1 bedside stand, a desk they used as a tv stand, a foot stool with a stained cushion, and a blankets, that we ended up shoving under the gaping hole underneath our door. We didn't want to be bitten by bugs or infested with cockroaches after all. Anyway, not only was the room shitty (although it did have A/C and a room light, which the last "4-star" hotel in Chengde didn't have) the bathroom was small, poorly lit and the toilet leaked water from the bottom, creating a massive puddle after every flush, that is if the flush worked. We would usually have to lift that tank cover and fill the tank with water to allow it to flush. Good thing we only spent one night there.

Anyway, when we were waking up before the sunrise at around 330 am this morning, I saw a fucking cockroach. Nasty as shit and crawling around on the floor, I so appreciate living in the apartments back at BNU now. I hear the apartments we are at are also supposed to be the worst. I can't wait for fall now.

In any case, we all started to walk up to the wall at around 4 am, trying to make it to a high peak before sunrise so we could see the sunrise over the hills and set on the Great Wall as we were on it. It was AWESOME. The stretch we walked on was very untouristy and the only people up there on the wall were with our program. For the longest stretch to the end we spent time with a couple of our friends just walking, crawling, climbing, sliding, falling, and being scared shitless from the missing walls that should have acted as rails. Many parts of the wall were actually very dangerous and lacking in safety precautions.

The wall at sunrise

A section of the Great Wall

Anyway, the 7-8 mile hike was amazing, though physically tolling. The views were spectacular and the group I shared the hike with were particularly funny and cautious too. But in the end, although most of us went at different speeds and in different groups, we all made it to the end. Something we can tell everyone now. And afterward, one of our tour guide group leaders whose hometown was in Chengde and who helped us to find and visit cool places told us that we were all heroes of China because no one could say that they were heroes until they conquered the Great Wall. I'm glad we all made it.

But the trip didn't only include the Great Wall hike. It included a massive a rave bonfire, that was both awkward and kinda fun. The hotel was putting it on for us as an apology to the fact that we were no longer allowed to sleep on the wall, a fact that the hotel had promised us prior to our arrival. We also visited places in Chengde, a paper cutting place that was pretty cool, two cool temples and in all places we went the weather was farrr superior to Beijing. The sky was blue, the air was fresh and not too humid and there weren't AS MANY bugs out during the day. Chengde was quite awesome but it didn't have the same feeling as Beijing. I'm glad we were able to make a trip there because I had a lot of fun. Also, don't trust what 4-star hotel means in China, because it could be the equivalent of a 2-star in USA, plus no functioning A/C.


There were also huge bugs, cool photo opps, people getting sick, a cool bus ride around on a small road, freaky robot looking deer, burning LOTS of incense, and hundreds of mosquitos. It was a really cool trip.

Oh! Also, we played a lot of Mafia. A LOT. You know, the game where you try to guess who is a mafia and kill him by voting him off. It's a really fun game if you know what you are doing. Although, it started to get really boring and tedious as soon as we reached the 50 game marker. Well, maybe not 50 games, but we started to have to learn new techniques and stuff because people could basically read each other very well and people were starting to form alliances and try to kill of people that were previous Mafia and really good at the role. It was really fun and we spent hours on end playing that AND ERS (egyptian rat screw), and oh boy do people, AHEM, get competitive...


Anyway, that's a good update for now. School starts again tomorrow, I'm going to try to get to sleep early. After all, all the Mafia playing the other night only allowed us to sleep for about 3 hours before we hiked for the next 4 hours. Gonna go get food now.