My Guilty Pleasure

Let me start by saying that one of the things I love most about China is all the little drink stands everywhere. Seriously. It is wonderful. I pass about 6 on the way to work alone... well, not all of them carry such variety, but they do exist. There's several chains, my favorite is this one: CoCo. They must have about 40 different drinks you can get. This one is the passion fruit tea with passion fruit seeds, black pearls and coconut jelly. It set me back about $1.25.

Tea in China is taken very seriously. But, from what I've learned, pretty much anything with water is tea. Like dried lemons in water= lemon tea. Hibiscus in water=Hibiscus tea. They do have tea leaves as well, but the term tea is very liberal. This drink has a scoop of passion fruit concentrate, a scoop of seeds, black pearls and coconut jelly, a shot of simple syrup, ice and water (I love watching them mix things from all their different containers).

I also like their blueberry pulp tea. So refreshing on my walks home from work :) I will miss these!

The Great Wall of China

That's right. I went to the Great Wall of China. And I learned how to say it in Chinese. I did use a translator to get the actual characters though :) Wǒ qù guò cháng chéng 我去过长城 (whoa chew gwo chang chun--that's what it sounds like to me, though I'm no expert).

So here's the scoop--I decided kind of last minute to catch a train up to Beijing. Ashley found out that she'd be there for the next 3 months doing summer camp, and she told me if I didn't get there quick she'd go without me. Talk about true friendship, right? She got there Friday, June 1st. I arrived Wednesday, June 6. Lucky for me she got thrown into 10 classes and hadn't had much of a chance to see anything touristy ;) Karma, right? Anyway, I was super excited to go see Ashley and of course the Great Wall. I got up super early Wednesday morning and caught a fast train to Beijing. It took about 4 hours, then another hour by metro to get to her hotel. But, I did make it. The first day we went to the markets (I'm addicted--help!) and met up with my friend from college, JD. His parents have been living in China for a few years and he has an internship at a hospital here this summer. I was excited to see him too. The next morning, Ashley and I got up early (do you see a pattern here... early mornings?!) and thought we'd be smart and catch the train to the Great Wall instead of the bus. It is only 6 yuan (right under $1) each way to take the train about 90 minutes... unfortunately, we weren't able to get on the 8:34 AM train as planned. I have no idea why, they just kept telling us no. They gestured to come back at 10 to get tickets for the next train at 10:57 AM... so odd. We killed time at McDonald's and Starbucks. True tourism at its finest. 

The train ride was pretty uneventful. Although getting on the train was exciting. First, we lined up like cattle in a corral for 30 minutes so we could have a chance at getting a seat on the 90 minute train. Then, once the doors opened, people started running--literally--towards the train to pass other people up. We did get seats, but it was pretty hilarious to watch masses of Chinese people running at full speed towards the train.

Here I am at the wall. I was so excited to have my ticket to get in. And I was excited for cleanish air, blue sky, and clouds that were legitimately white. Funny how priorities change after 7 months.

Here's a few details of our little walk to the wall. It was 800m from the train station to the Great Wall entrance. We went to Badaling section. The picture on the right was on all the trash cans, but I thought it looked cool. The top picture is one of the fortress looking areas high up on the hill. These were some of the "bricks" in the wall--I liked the Chinese carvings. Pretty sure these aren't authentic, I think this section of the wall has been rebuilt in true Chinese fashion. They are really great a creating fakes :)

The top picture was taken towards the beginning of our trek. I knew the Great Wall was built into the mountains, but I wasn't expecting the "touristy" part to be so treacherous. These pictures don't really do any justice to the actual incline on the wall. Parts were just a pathway, parts had stairs. The stairs were super uneven. There were parts where we were practically climbing on our hands and knees it was so steep. By the top, we were definitely hot and sweaty. But we did it! I even got a key chain carved with my Chinese name to prove it. Before the trek, we needed some lunch. There was a Subways at the base of the Great Wall. Gotta love westernization. The other two pictures are different views from the wall.

 

The goal of these two pictures was to show the incline--looking up at it and back down. I don't know how well it worked though... judging by the looks, not super well. 

I just couldn't stop taking pictures on the wall. I even tried out a panoramic picture to try to capture the size of the wall. Did you know it was over 3,700 miles long? I can't even imagine that length. It was built and rebuilt for centuries to protect China from the Mongolians and other invaders. I would think the mountains would naturally help against that, but what do I know? :) 

What a day. We hiked and hiked and hiked. There were cable cars you can take to the top, but then can you really say you "climbed" the Great Wall? I think not. It was a typical China day for us... as we were enjoying the views from the Wall, several groups of tourists came over and asked for pictures with us. And you know what that means--once you say yes to one person, you have a line forming. At first it was kind of a fluke--we posed for about a dozen pictures with different people. Then, that same thing happened 5 more times on the way around and back down the wall. Ashley actually had some of the people take pictures with her camera to document it... I just haven't gotten the pictures from her yet. Oh, China--you never fail to amaze me. Here we are at an ancient site that played a key role in your history, and people are concerned about getting pictures with the foreign girls.

In other exciting news, I thought this was cool. They were using mules to transport materials up the wall to I guess repair or rebuild sections of it. It just seemed like a scene you'd see in a movie, so I took pictures. Even though it was in the high 90s, very difficult for me, and made me sweat like none other, I had a great time becoming acquainted with the Great Wall of China. It's just one of those things I may never have the chance to do again, so I'm glad I did it now.

Massage

So another thing most people know about me is that I don't really like to be touched. I'm definitely not a huggy-type person. But, my friends here always like to get massages, and so I've been along several times. You can't really escape being touched in China. One because it is incredibly crowded and people always want to squeeze in so they don't have to wait. Two I'm foreign and people like to randomly touch me--on the bus, walking down the street, in the elevator. Just like my arms or hair. I think they like to compare their skin color to mine? Not so sure. I wanted to recap two of our recent experiences.

We have this place really close by. It mainly specializes in foot massages. It is 78 yuan for 100 minutes, which is really cheap. I like it because they give you a drink, pears, and a bowl of dumpling soup :) The picture above is the ginger paste for your knees. A Chinese friend told me it takes the cold out of your bones, whatever that means. All I know is they put that stuff on, layer on steaming hot towels, and wrap it up tightly. Then you let it sit on your knees til it starts to burn. Then, then untie it, but leave the paste on for 10 minutes more. Your knees will tingle for the next hour.

The first of the two experiences happened about a month ago. Joanne and I decided to go after work. When we got there, I think they were trying to tell us they didn't have any private double rooms available. We had no idea what they were saying, so they just led us upstairs. When we got there, it was a room with 5 seats--2 were taken by some Chinese men. We left a chair between us and took the two on the end. Our ladies came in and gave us a great foot massage that was slightly painful--though typical for China. As we were getting the massage, we saw the Chinese men getting their feet scraped. We decided that we'd ask our other coworkers to write it down so we could come back and try it. So after the hour long foot massage part, you get 40ish minutes of back and leg massage. They use a bag of what feels like hot rice and rub it on your back. Joanne and I both had our eyes closed and were enjoying the only relaxing part of the massage when we heard some commotion by us. I opened my eyes and there were the guys, one was massaging my back with this rice bag and one with Joanne. I think they got embarrassed that we saw and quickly left after that. Interesting, right?

The next time we went, we came prepared with our Chinese written to try the foot scraping too. It wasn't painful, and my feet felt really soft afterwards. I guess we pointed to the wrong thing though, because we also got our ears cleaned. My description won't really give it justice, but here it comes. A lady walks in with a caboodle full of strange looking tools. First, she looks at your ears. Then, she dug in the caboodle and pulled out a headlight worthy of some serious cave diving. I laughed so hard when I saw her put it on (I was watching her clean Joanne's ears). So she pulls out various long tools that look kind of like Q-tips, but they each have a different cleaning thing on the end (one looked like a nail polish brush, one a normal q-tip, one looked like some feather thing...) Then she pulled out a long metal looking rod that she wrapped with what I'm assuming was a kleenex. She inserts it into your ear, then takes metal tongs and hits it against her arm. Then she hold the tongs over the metal rod to make it vibrate. Repeat that 6 or 7 times... what a weird sensation. After all that is done, she wipes down your ears with what felt like an alcohol swab. If that wasn't enough, now you get an ear massage. She rubs all over the ear lobe, then folds your ear over and massages it. Very odd. My ears have never felt so clean.

Needless to say, we were at this massage place for about 2 hours, maybe longer. Gotta love it.