Wonders of the World

During our time in Beijing, we climbed atop the longest cemetery in the world, otherwise known as the Great Wall of China. That last tidbit of information our tour guide was kind enough to inform us of on the bus ride there. My apologies to the one million Chinese peasants for disrespecting their informal gravesite. 

Sorry, not sorry. It was pretty cool.

 Honestly, I was kind of expecting the Great Wall's majesty to be inflated by it's hype and mass tourism. Most of the rest of the sites we visited were slightly disappointing; however, I was pleasantly taken off guard by the simple grandeur of the Wall.

Photo cred to Jessica Parker, who lugged around her big, fancy camera all vacation. 

Our hike on the great wall began after we took a cable car to a popular starting point. The stretch of the wall that we climbed boasted the highest point of the entire Great Wall. I think I was able to actually appreciate the wall more as it was necessary to quite literally climb at some points. Due to the welcome cold weather in Beijing, we had brought coats; 10 minutes into the hike, coats were shed and people were panting. 

Like any good thing, the Great Wall is in a constant state of repair.

Scattered throughout the wall were these old ladies selling ridiculously overpriced beverages and offering contrived Kodak moments such as the example shown above. $10 water bottle anyone? What amazed me was that they made the climb to their designated area twice each day. Gotta admire the entrepreneurial spirit of elderly Chinese women. 

 On the same tour as us was quite an assortment of foreign nationalities. While climbing the especially arduous parts of the Wall, I passed the time by learning to count to ten in both Thai and Hebrew from a couple of friendly Israelis we met.

It was fun to meet and talk to this group of students at a Hong Kong International University. They were mostly from  western European countries. 

 We spent about an hour climbing to the highest point of the Wall, admiring the incredible view (hampered by some fog), trying to wrap our minds around the enormity of it all, and taking advantage of some perfect picture spots.

Global wonders call for jazz hands. 

In Xi'an we went to visit what the Chinese like to refer to as the Eight Wonder of the World.

In 1974, a poor farmer discovered one of the world's largest tombs built for a single person- the Terracotta Army constructed to protect the first Emperor of unified China, Qin Shi Huang. 10 years later, Judy Batschi was among the earliest Americans to discover said tomb. 40 years later, I marveled at the narcissism and paranoia it would take to order over 8,000 workers to craft a warrior in their own likeness, bury those warriors in your own tomb to protect you in the afterlife, and then kill said workers in an effort to keep secret the location of your tomb. Some secrets can be too well kept.

This was the first Terracotta warrior that was found in the tomb pits. 

So far, three pits full of warriors, horses, and chariots have been discovered. Unfortunately, the roof of the first pit caved in, leaving a graveyard of broken clay men. I found this first pit to be more eerie than the rest; it was like looking at corpses covered in dust, the carvings are that realistic. 

This site is supposedly the oldest brick wall ever
found in China. 

Frankly, one of the best parts of the tour was our straight-to-the-point tour guide, Lady Jaja. She had the most hilarious way of rounding up her brood of non-Chinese tourists and giving her information in the most direct and unembellished way possible. What more can you ask for?

Temples and Camels and Mosques, Oh My!

Staying in Beijing and Xian has given us the wonderful opportunity to visit some beautiful ancient places of worship. 

During our last day in Beijing, we visited the Lama Temple, a beautiful Buddhist Lamasery built during the Qing dynasty. Side note: It was remarkable how many times I sang the A.P. World History Chinese dynasty song in order to have some inkling on the relative ancientness of a certain ancient site.

Although the Temple is still in use as a monastery and place of worship, tourism had an overwhelming presence and manifested itself in the crowds of people and cameras wherever one turned. Each visitor was given a complimentary bundle of incense sticks to burn at various locations. Although we were told only to burn three sticks, there were quite a few people going ham with their incense. The resultant wall of rosemary scented smoke was a little distracting-and smothering-and it was quite a different experience from any other religious buildings I’ve been in.

While we were walking through the maze of buildings, we did see a few monks wandering about. I’m not sure where they lived on the premises or where all the other monks had gone off to. In one of the buildings, I was rounding a corner and heard the sound of a monk humming/chanting. I eventually located the source- a classic pot bellied, bald headed, maroon robed monk sitting on a stool. After a moment, his chanting was punctuated by a profound yawn, followed by continued humming. It’s always nice to see the more familiar aspects of humanity even in our holiest of men.

It was definitely frustrating not to understand what all the symbols and statues represented. I’m not sure if Buddhism is extremely complicated and contains tons of different religious figures that I’m totally ignorant about, or if Buddhism is way more abstract and less ritualized than I’m imagining. Either way, it was fascinating to be exposed to a totally new and foreign religion.






After arriving in Xi’an the following day, I continued with this theme of new and foreign religions by exploring the Great Mosque in the city’s Muslim Quarters. The Great Mosque is one of the largest and oldest Islamic places of worship in China. It’s especially notable in its blending of traditional Chinese architecture and Arabic lettering and decorations. I was initially not going to pay the 25 Yuan for admission, but boy am I glad I did!

Shortly after entering the mosque’s gorgeous and peaceful grounds, a group of Malaysian Muslims with remarkably good English approached us and, during our conversation, informed us that that very day was Eid Al-Adha, one of the two major Islamic holidays. It is also called the Festival of Sacrifice and celebrates Abraham’s willingness to obey God…..by sacrificing sheep!!!!



That’s right, in that beautiful and ancient mosque, devout Muslim men were killing sheep and hanging them on hooks in rows in order to strip off the meat and give it to the poor. After hearing about this from our new friends, I was excited enough to witness my first animal sacrifice, but I was totally unprepared for the entire CAMEL lying deceased in the courtyard. Up to that day, I had not seen a camel, or an animal sacrifice, or the slaughtering and disembowelment of any animal. Basically, we hit the jackpot. While I was watching- partly in disgust, but mostly in absorbed fascination, more friendly English speaking Muslims shared more about this holiday, their beliefs, and the significance of animal sacrifices.

Later on in our visit, we were able to witness one of the five daily calls to prayer. I loved watching all the Muslim men in the mosque gradually make their way to the prayer hall (for lack of a better or more correct term) and prepare themselves to worship. It was different than what I had always imagined the frequent calls to prayer to be, and it was a wonderful sight to see.

All the people we met there were so kind and devout and accepting. The place was beautiful and the people were beautiful. I wish we could have stayed longer in the Mosque, but street vendors and our rumbling stomachs called.

This is purportedly one the four original sundials left in China. I'm going to need to brush up on my sundial reading capabilities.

Aren't round doorways the best?

Besides little old men with canes and kufis of course.

Sacrficial pictures below; viewer discretion advised

I'm Leaving on a Slow Train

At 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 30, I departed Xiaolan with my pack of American teachers destined for Beijing and all it’s offers of greatness. October 1st marks China’s National Day, which celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China in the 1940s. This week is a holiday for pretty much the whole country, so our school decided it was the most convenient time to allot us our week long vacation. 

As this is the only vacation we have time enough to travel North to Beijing and other historical landmarks, we are headed towards China’s capital city, despite the reports of throngs of people there at this time. We are determined. 

Due to our status as visitors to the country, we were only able to buy our tickets 18 days beforehand and were therefore only able to obtain tickets for the infamous slow train on hard seats. 

The past two weeks have presented an increasing sense of dread over the impending horrors that seating in an insanely crowded train on a hard seat for 21 hours would present. Only discovering more about the awesomeness of Xian, one of China’s oldest cities which holds the Terra Cotta Army, alleviated this trepidation. 

After traveling for three hours on a tuk tuk, a fast train, and a Subway-housed in a surprisingly nice station, despite presenting the everyday sight of a mother holding her toddler over a trash can to defecate- we arrived at the mass of people that marked the entrance to the slow speed train station. 

Side note: China has a very interesting transportation system. Besides its inability to meet the overwhelming demand for cross country public transportation, its modes of travel are as follows in decreasing order of expense and niceness: Planes; fast trains (aka pure luxury)- sleeper seats, soft seats, hard seats, and standing room; slow trains- sleeper seats, soft seats, hard seats, and standing room, and buses. In a sentence, slow trains are slightly hellish- smoke and smell included, although thankfully without the lakes of brimstone and not as many hopeless souls.

The hordes of locals waiting to gain entrance to the train station did much both to bridge the gap between children and adults and to bolster my belief in the necessity of trivial rules and regulations, such as the installation of tape and boundaries to enforce the simple idea of forming and waiting in a line. Not only were Chinese people shrilly reprimanding each other across the sea of heads for cutting in line, there were also quite a few lithe young men jumping over the turnstiles, seemingly without any consequence. And I just may have participated in the madness by physically refusing to let an tiny, aggressive, elderly Chinese lady jostle her way to in front of me. 

After getting past this bedlam, we dozen maids from school finally managed to board our own version of the Hogwarts Express- only instead of pumpkin pasties we were offered chicken feet, and sadly there were no Weasley's to share in my gingerhood. The following 21 hours passed thusly:

4:30-6:30 Enjoy a dinner of pre-prepared noodles and a bonding game of “Kill, Slay, Marry”

6:30-9 Pass the time with some conversation with the English speaking Chinese on the train, who gathered to us as bees to honey. These nice people included: Mary Joe, a health care management student who was ever so excited to hear about my own hospital administrator of a father; and Victor, another University student who was all too pleased to give us tips on the best way to tour Beijing. 

9-11 Jam out to a muffled A.B.B.A karaoke session in a mood of frivolity derived from the readiness to avoid contemplating another 14 hours on this blasted train. 

11-7 Make melatonin aided efforts to sleep interrupted by frequent stops throughout the countryside. Sleep was eventually abandoned in favor of a certain beloved BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series starring the timelessly delightful and clever Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. 

7-1:30 Spend the time absorbed in novels and observing the countryside views. 

Overall, our 21 hour train experience was not as terrible as anticipated. Maybe the sight of the poor standing room tickets sitting on the ground made our own position seem not quite as undesirable. Anyway, it was all worth it; in the next week, I will have explored many of the attractions the Middle Kingdom has to offer. 

Train station of insanity!

Cheerful survivors

Happy National Day!