I climbed the Great Wall of China...

...and all I got were these AWESOME PHOTOS!  :)  Muir's co-worker James Xin (pronounced like "Sheen") hired a driver and accompanied us and a fourth co-worker from Bangalore named Sandeep to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs.  We visited a part of the wall at Badaling.  About an hour away, it's the closest section to Beijing and the most visited.

The plaques just before the entrance to the Great Wall say
you're not a good Chinese man until you've climbed the Great Wall,
a famous saying of Mao Zedong. 

James pointing at something.

The side of the Great Wall facing Mongolia is higher than the side facing Beijing.  There were square openings near the bottom of the "outside" side of the wall where archers could shoot at would-be intruders.  If you look over either side, you would see that you're about 20-25 feet above the ground.  This section of the wall had been restored using modern construction techniques and the outer face was a smooth layer of concrete for the first 20 or so feet up from the ground.  So unfortunately, no, it would not be a good place to boulder.

A view in the other direction,
toward the entrance and visitors' center.

Parts of the wall were *very* steep.
I'd guess maybe a 60% grade. 

A good shot of the wall winding to the left and then to the right.

Muir's shirt was a big hit again at the Great Wall.  He got many requests from Chinese visitors for photos with him and was in scores more which were (somewhat) surreptitiously taken.

Despite prohibitions against defacing,
the Great Wall is covered in the carved names of inconsiderate visitors.

 We hiked along the Great Wall for about two hours before I had seen enough and Muir and I turned back around.  James and Sandeep continued on for another hour before we finally all met up again back at the visitors' center.  We grabbed a quick snack at a Subway in Badaling and hopped back in the chartered mini-van to visit the Ming Tombs.  On the way we made a micro-stop at The Sacred Way, a path at one end of the Ming Dynasty Imperial Tombs.

"The Sacred Way" near the Ming Tombs had pretty
sculptures on both sides of the willow-lined path.

There are several burial tombs in the Ming Tomb area and the excavation site we saw is called Dingling.  It contained the remains of the Wanli Emperor and his two empresses.

"The Diamond Wall," the original entrance used by
archeologists when the tomb was excavated in 1957.

Replica sarcophagi.

The scraps of paper on the red sarcophagi aren't litter, they're Chinese yuan.  James said that some visitors throw money on the coffins as an offering for blessings and good luck from the emperor, as one might throw coins in a fountain for good luck...a creepy, necrotic fountain.

Detail of a marble door handle
in the shape of an animal or beast head. 

Visiting the Dingling tomb was pretty quick, only about 20 minutes to walk down, through, and back out again.  Back on the surface, there were two exhibition halls displaying some of the artifacts unearthed during excavation, or rather their replicas.  Many of the items discovered were denounced and burned during the Cultural Revolution.  The official displays at the site painted a different picture.  They said things like the People's Republic of China championed the excavation efforts, opened a museum of the tomb to the public in 1959 (which I think was true) and did their utmost to preserve the historical site, and named times when it was listed on various national and international world-heritage registries.  I think this was a pretty sugar-coated account of the events to say the least.

Lunch with an old FALCON teacher

Last weekend was action-packed.  I'm breaking it up into a couple different posts to make it more episodic and because I need to get photos off of Muir's iPhone.  It's trickier than it sounds because he's always either at work or using it to look up words while he's reading.  *grumble, grumble*

Anyway!  I had emailed the FALCON teachers (FALCON being the summer class where Muir and I met) before departing for Beijing to tell them that we had gotten married and send a photo.  One of them, Ding Xuesong, moved back to Beijing after teaching in the U.S. for a while, and she and I arranged a time for the three of us to reconnect over lunch.  She recommended a restaurant in Wu Dao Kou that served Peking duck, a dish that I wanted to try very much, and we spent a few hours eating and catching up.  She has a two-year-old son and had other news to pass along about some of the other students we were in class with all those years ago.  She is still teaching Chinese and just started as a teacher for a year-long study abroad program for high school juniors and seniors from the West as well as Japan and Korea.  It was really fun to see a familiar face in Beijing, and before we said goodbye, Muir suggested that we get together again at least one more time before we leave.  He wants Ding to tell him if she thinks his Chinese had improved.  Muir is still such an eager student. :)  (Sorry, no pictures.  I was completely absorbed in our lunch and didn't realize I'd forgotten to take any photos until later that day.)

Bubbles, Tea, and Me

Muir loves bubble tea.  I mean looooves it.  I like it too, I'm just not as fanatical about it as he is.  Despite his lactose intolerance, it will probably come as no surprise to you that we buy bubble tea and then walk around Wu Dao Kou after almost every dinner.  Since drinking bubble tea is sort of a ritual now, I thought I'd post some photos of us enjoying bubble tea and other local treats.

Muir waiting in line. The counter is just a store front window directly on the sidewalk.

Bubble tea straws.

(Your guess is as good as mine as to the English translation of the shop's name.  What time is it exactly?  Time to drink bubble tea?  Press play?  Read the adjacent Chinese characters?)

Mid-bite at The Bridge Cafe

Muir, green tea red bean cake, and black tea

I'm sorry to say that the cake actually looked better than it tasted.  As is typical, there just isn't as much sugar added to baked goods.  I'd compare the sweetness to that of animal crackers, very subtle.  There's plenty of sugar in some of the syrupy-looking meat dishes, handfuls I'm told, just not in their pastries.  *sigh*  What good is a slice of cake without the accompanying sugar high?!  I'm on the lookout for a Western style cupcake shop.  The Beijinger listed a few in Chao Yang, a district on the eastern side of the city, but for now I have to wait until we have a reason to go over there.

La Vie Quotidienne

So what exactly do I do in Beijing every day?  Well, I'm in Chinese class every weekday afternoon for two hours.  The school is called "1 on 1 Mandarin" and my teacher is a woman about my age.  Sorry for the grainy picture.  I've been equally surprised by how much I remember and how much I've forgotten since FALCON six years ago.  When I'm not in class I'm working on my online portfolio and looking for a job.  If you have any good leads or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment.

Other than that, just puttering around, cleaning the apartment, buying a few groceries, doing the laundry, fighting mosquitoes (lately now that the weather has cooled down), surfing the web, and reading the few books I brought along (thanks Skye for the one you recommended to me!).

Mid-Autumn Festival Part Deux

Many Beijingers had the day off on Monday for the Mid-Autumn Festival.  In addition to eating dozens of moon cakes, Muir and I noticed that the holiday was observed in several other peculiar ways:  our favorite juice bar switched its bubble tea from iced to hot, Muir's office turned off their air-conditioning, and all the local real estate agents added blazers to their uniforms.  It was such a funny monolithic shift.  Of course it comes as no surprise considering that China is also the largest country with only one time zone.  It just seems like such a quintessentially Chinese thing to do.  Anyway, happy Mid-Autumn Festival.  Don't forget to wear your jacket.

Mid-Autumn Festival

Summer in Beijing is over; it seems to have abruptly ended yesterday.  The daily high temperature feels like it dropped about 10-15 degrees, and it's been cold and rainy all day today.  Just two days ago it was still sweltering.  The abrupt change in season coincidentally coincides with the Mid-Autum Festival, which is being celebrated this weekend.  It has also turned my thoughts towards the bitter Beijing winter.  Speaking of which, last night Muir and I took the subway deep into the heart of the city to meet some of his online forum friends for dinner at a dumpling restaurant.  The food was delicious and the company congenial.  They four whom we met were seasoned foreigners from around the world and had lots of opinions and advice to extoll about living in Beijing.  Muir also seemed to enjoy swapping stories about the triumphs and tribulations of studying Chinese for many years.  The most useful piece of information one of the sojourners shared was to buy some thick long underwear to take the chill off the winter weather.  They didn't have to tell me twice!  It sounds like a terrific idea.  Gimmie!  After dinner and a round of drinks, Muir and I tried to catch a cab back to WuDaoKou since the subway trains stop running by about 11:30 PM, unfathomably early for a major city.  (Ahem, BART.)  It was only a quarter to midnight, but it was as if 90% of Beijing's 19 million people had all gone to bed already.  The sprawling city seemed almost deserted in comparison to the sea of people we faced during the Friday evening rush hour on the way to dinner.  We walked/waited for 20 minutes before finding an available (and legal) taxi cab.  I'll have to take some photos next time we're in the infamous Xizhimen subway station during rush hour.  It's a mob scene.

Sightseeing in Beijing

Last Saturday, Muir took me to see The Forbidden City, Tianamen Square, and the Silk Market.  I'd forgotten that there isn't that much to see besides the buildings in the Forbidden City because all of the treasures inside were taken to Taiwan before the communist revolution and are now housed in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.  It doesn't take away anything from The Forbidden City's sheer size though.  It's quite impressive as far as royal palaces go.

The most entertaining part of the trip was observing the reactions of all the Chinese people who read Muir's shirt--sometimes out loud--and then burst out laughing!  It reads "Here comes the foreigner" (in Chinese, of course) on the front and "There goes the foreigner" on the back.  Muir gets all the credit for the hilarity of his shirt.  He created it himself.  It was worth just hours and hours of endless amusement.  Truly priceless.

On Sunday we strolled through the campuses of Tsinghua University and Beijing University.  Here we are in front of the East Gate of Tsinghua University.

Home Sweet Home

Yep, it's our own little slice of Beijing.  We live in a group of buildings called Dong Sheng Yuan.  We're building 4, door 4 (below), apartment 601 on the sixth (and top) floor.  There is no elevator.

In Chinese culture, 4 is an unlucky number, but 6 and 8 are lucky numbers.  No, there is no apartment #444 in our "door" (there are only two apartments per floor per door, X01 and X02, so it's probably somewhere else in the building), but a salesman at the China Unicom cell phone store said that three 4's was extremely lucky.  No, I don't get it either.  (Mom, please feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken.)

Lotus

Our local supermarket is called "Lotus".  It sells a little bit of everything, kind of like a Super Walmart.  On Monday I bought Skippy peanut butter, an imported luxury item primarily for foreigner shoppers.  It was delicious.