November 14th 2010 / Beijing, China

I didn't go out last night but ended up staying up late talking to my roommate and her friend anyway.  We talked about Andre and that whole thing, which was great because I hadn't really talked about it with anyone yet and I have lots of feelings.  So that was therapeutic, if a little depressing.

 

So today we got our wakeup call, which was much appreciated, and I got a nice surprise when I went downstairs for breakfast and saw that Martha was down there!  The Xi'an trip had finally come to Beijing and were staying at our Holiday Inn.  Apparently the Terra Cotta warriors were super cool, but I didn't feel too bad—I had a great time in that first day in Hong Kong and on this trip, too.  So after we finished a breakfast of pancakes covered in syrup and chocolate and pot stickers (BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS) we headed out to the Beijing International Kung Fu school, which is actually where they shot some of the new Karate Kid movie (at the rival school).  So this was awesome.  We headed into the same hall as in the movie and sat down in these rows of chairs, facing the stage. 

 

Music began playing.  There were I think nine men on the stage, all in silky red, yellow, or blue uniforms.  And then they did CRAZY MAGICAL THINGS.  The first "act" was just showing off their physical prowess—one by one they would toss themselves through the air like rag dolls, spinning and flipping, doing backflips and summersaults and cartwheels.  They also did the worm and lots of backbends.  It was the coolest thing EVER.  I couldn't even believe that they were human!  I definitely leaned over at one point and was like "Is this real life?"

 

The second act was done with WEAPONS.  There were swords (single and double), scimitars, chains, and my favorite, a BROOM.  The swords and metal things were too bendy to do real harm, but they were whipping them around so quickly it looked just… absolutely crazy.  Kind of like those movies with the villain extras that are going really quick and crazy (but who also tend to be cut down by the hero really quickly, because they just look so uncontrollable).  I wasn't sure how controlled they were and would have maybe liked to see something slowed down to prove how controlled they were, but I was too busy basically jaw-dropping to think too much of it. 

 

The third and final act was the most epic.  Basically, one or two guys would come out and start to do poses very slowly.  You could see their muscles trembling as they slowly moved from position to position as they "charged up."  Then another person would come around with something—a piece of metal, a wooden pole, etc.  And they would do different things to break them!  Two guys smashed metal sheets with their head, another broke a bowl with just two fingers.  One man held out his arms and leaned over to show his back while another broke wooden poles on it.  Another stabbed a needle through a pane of glass to pop a balloon—way whack.  My favorite one was this older guy who came out—he was not wearing the same uniforms.  I couldn't tell what his rank was.  But there was this long, curvy hook.  Four men were holding one end of it and he held the other end.  He twisted the metal all the way around his neck as they held the other end, showed us, and then bent it back.  It was horrifically cool, because I was freaking out the entire time because he bent a metal bar around his neck arghasdhfgh.  There were a couple more dance moves and then they finished and bowed, and we were able to go up and get a couple pictures.  I was in my kung-fu panda hat! 

 

A couple of the guys then wanted to teach us a routine, so we were pretty excited about that.  I was terribly bad at it, because I have a hard enough time after weeks of learning choreography during the musicals in high school for dances, I couldn't learn a full routine in the span of twenty minutes.  But I still learned a great couple of poses, which was pretty awesome.  :D

 

After that we went off to lunch, driving a ways away to the "Friendship Store."  It was half restaurant, half gigantic tourist store, and it was toooootally a commission store, which kind of made me grumpy, but I guess you have to make money where you can so I tried to make the best of it.  The lunch was kind of eh, but shopping afterwards was really fun.  The Christmas ornaments I looked at were waaaay too expensive (the only difference between the ones that were there (180 yuan) and the ones on the street (50 yuan) was that these weren't dusty), but I found the medicine bell balls that were beautiful and the same price that you  could get them on the street.  I've always wanted some, so I got them and have been using them on the bus.  I like little stress toys.  I also caved—I've been wanting a stamp to do seals for forever, and I saw a couple of people getting it done, so I too got my name (just my last name, oh so professional) phonetically translated into Chinese characters and carved into the bottom of the stamp.  I didn't buy the ink because it was outrageous, but I love my little stamp.  It's stone and has a horse carved into the top, and is like blondish white rock. 

 

When we went back outside we had the best surprise EVER.  It was SNOWING!  I caught a few snowflakes on my tongue and was far too excited for everyone else to handle.  I love snow when it can't last long enough to be a sludgy mess, and the snows of China are just so exciting.  :)  Then we were off again—we drove another hour through the countryside to finally get to our big name destination of the day—the Great Wall of China.  We were going to the Mutianyu part of the wall, which is far away from the center of Beijing but is also far less crowded and only Chinese locals really go there.  The trees were all brown and soon we were driving up into the mountains.  Finally, we pulled into a parking lot, where we all bundled up against the cold and got out.  We could see the wall at the top of the mountains, far away, and began to start our climb up.  We walked through a narrow street lined with TONS of shops—I definitely got a I <3 Beijing shirt.  I love haggling.  I also found a lovely bracelet.  But anyway, we walked up until we got to a cable car.  Me and a four other people got into the orange cable car #1, and we began to climb up the hill.  It was so cool.  I wish I could explain how the foliage looked, because we don't really have anything like it in California (mostly because we don't have seasons).  Just scarce and brown and yellow grass.  I loved it.  

 

Anyway, we got to the top.  I got a pack of Oreos and a green tea (others were getting beer) and finally,  finally, set foot on the Great Wall of China.

 

It was everything I wanted it to be and more.  There weren't very many people around because it was near the end of the day and the setting sun was lighting everything up orange, so my pictures all came out amazing.  The wall stretched up and down mountains, turning this way and that with little turrets in between.  In the turrets were little stone pathways with windows.  I didn't envy the people who were doing the Hiking on the Great Wall trip, because it was freezing up there, but I was having such an amazing time running up and down the 3 inch to 3 foot stairs that I forgot all about being cold.  I looked out and wanted to fall off the wall into Mongolia, but I think the country border is further back now.  :(  Rats.

 

All of a sudden it was over all too fast, and we had walked along the wall to the second cable cars.  We were up there for a good hour, admiring the way the sun glazed over the Chinese countryside and reflecting off the towns below.  And finally, we had our very last adventure—we were going to toboggan down the mountain.  There was a steel track that snaked around trees and over valleys all the way back down to the bottom. 

 

The group ahead of me took all the sleds, so I waited a while for one to come up.  And then I had the ride of a lifetime.  I raced to the bottom, with tears leaking out of my eyes due to the wind and cold and laughing hysterically.  One man shouted something at me in Chinese, undoubtedly to slow down, but there was just no way.  It was one of the most joyous moments of my entire trip.  At the bottom, slowing to a stop with tears streaming down my face and a huge grin, I must have looked like quite a sight. 

 

After doing a little more bargaining with the shop owners, we took off to go back to central Beijing.  An hour and a half later we got to our destination—the Flying Acrobats Show, which was in this little theater.  I bought some popcorn that said "American' Popcorn" on it and an apple juice.  THE POPCORN TASTED LIKE FRUIT LOOPS.  Everyone I gave it to said the same, so I ended up putting it down and getting an ice cream bar to get the taste out of my mouth—I know, I'm a fatty.  But the weirdest part was that other people with the same bag of popcorn had a different tasting popcorn!  Chinese foods are strange.

 

Anyway, the acrobatics show.  Basically, all of today has taught me that Chinese people are superhuman immortals who can do crazy amazing things, from the awesome kung fu to the acrobatics.  It was an INCREDIBLE show.  First of all I wish all my theater tech friends had been there to see how epic the lights were—there were lasers and it was set to music and it was just put together in such a dramatic, epic way.  There was no storyline, not really, but just were all these awesome scenes.  There were warlords spring boarding off a plank and doing flips in the air, women dressed like swans who could balance on one hand after having climbed to the top of two other people, a woman who created a very Jenga-like stack of chairs that she then balanced on—it was pretty nuts.  Eight people fit onto this bicycle and did tricks on it with fans, so it looked like a flaming phoenix at the end.  My favorite was this hug contraption that came down from the ceiling that almost looked like a zipper ride—two man-sized hamster wheels on a spinning circuit, and they would do tricks while making it spin, like jump rope or walk outside the wheels onto the actual contraption.  It was so incredibly amazing.  During this entire performance I would gasp and then start laughing.  I'm sure I must be a real joy to sit next to.  ALSO THERE WERE CHINESE YOYO TRICKS. 

 

I can't even describe all the great acts there were.  I didn't get the DVD at the store, but I did get the CD because it was pretty cheap and I loved every song they had up there—it was some epic power music to write too!  We definitely had a lot to talk about when we went to dinner later. 

 

Dinner was a few blocks away and was the most amazing Chinese food we've had on this trip so far—I'm not gonna lie, we haven't had the best Chinese food of my life on this trip, which kind of surprises me.  But still, everything about this place was awesome.  Egg drop soup, garlic eggplant, kung-pao chicken, white rice, fried beef, beef and cucumber—it was all just amazing.  We talked a little about what had been going on the past few days, as I'm kind of freaking out over the fact that my partner for my paper and debate in CSI just left the ship to go back home, so I don't know what I'm going to do.  We also talked about how much we've changed over our time on SAS—how we'd scoffed at the idea of the ship being our "beacon of hope" and how true it was now!

 

Now we're just back in our Holiday Inn.  I just killed a gigantic spiky cockroach, which is now belly-up under a coffee mug near the TV.  Hopefully there are none in my bag.  Aside from that, epic times today.  I will never forget my Great Wall experience!