The Great Wall

Yesterday we traveled to the Great Wall. The section we visited is a restored section of about 2 miles in length. A restored Great Wall is about 50 feet high and 20 feet wide. It varies in steepness from gentle slope to 2:1 staircases, and is lined with crenellations that are parallel to the path rather than to gravity. It runs along the crest of the hills and mountains. There is greenery on both sides, and you could easily see an enemy approaching from miles away, back in the days before smog. There were no blue skies to see on that day, and we could only see a shadow of the far towers of the wall through the smog, even though they were less than two miles away.

The wall beyond the restored section is intact, but covered with dirt and weeds that have grown over the neglected centuries. I could begin to doubt that you can see the great wall from space, because of all the overgrowth.

We got down from the Wall with a toboggan run. It lasted about 3 minutes. In the line I met a bunch of 10 year olds from an international school in Beijing. One of them approached me out of the blue in German and asked me if I was Deutsch. I answered in German that I was not German but could speak it well. They were impressed, though every one of the kids was fluent in English and at least one other language. They were really impressed when they found out I also spoke French. Then they actually said 'wow' and started vousvoyering me. They were mostly the children of diplomats, and in their group they had English/French mixes, Japanese/Canadian, and of course Germans. The least spoken language among them was Mandarin, though they had a working knowledge of it. I went down the toboggan right ahead of them, and managed to not let them catch up with me.

After the Wall hike we had lunch at the foot of the Wall, and walked a bit across some farmland on what felt like a French Grand Randonnee. After that we went back to Beijing and prepared to visit the Kung Fu & Opera. We could choose one or the other, but the reports afterward indicated that they were almost the same thing. They both had acrobatic Kung-Fu like dancing and music, and the main difference seemed to be the plot. The Opera was about love, and the Kung-Fu was about, well, Kung Fu.

For dinner I finally ate at one of the cultural icons of modern China, KFC. KFC is everywhere here, as popular as McDonalds, and KFC was here first. Its such a part of China that their presence here has made it into books. The Chinese KFC recipe is slightly more spicy, but recognizeably KFC. They have one thing here that I don't remember seeing in KFCs in the states, the custard/flan desert. I got a 6-pack of them, and they are delicious. The top is slightly caramelized, and the crust is flaky and light. The other KFC surprise is that they closed at 11. This was a KFC in the center of the capital city of the most populous nation on earth, and they kicked us out at 11. They didn't even let us linger. They turned out the lights like parents at a middle-schooler's party.