The Great Wall

Somebody ought to be shot for saying that the Great Wall of China is visible from outer space. The most surprising thing about it is that it's not really all that wide. Or tall. If you could see it from space, you could easily see a three bedroom house at the same distance. Frankly, with Beijing smog being what it is, it's surprising you can see it from the ground. And it's a ridiculous proposition that you could see it on most days from a blimp.

But it is quite picturesque. More on that later…You get there by taking a bus, the 919, north of Beijing. Getting on requires the usual hand signals and misunderstandings. Luckily the pronunciation and tone pattern for "Badaling," the town where you see the wall, is nearly identical to "Badabing," Tony Soprano's favorite strip bar.

Once you get there you have a ¾ mile uphill walk—I mean, really, why the hell wouldn't you put the bus stop a full 3/4 of a mile from your destination? This is China after all! The town itself is a collection of souvenir shops, selling, as is the way with communist countries, all the same stuff.

So you arrive. And there it is, many feet high, 15 feet wide, built and rebuilt of rocks and concrete, most of it presumably 12 years ago with a crane, and covered for miles with hoards of Chinese. It's steep too. The wall snakes along the ridges of mountains, which ascend and descend with no particular regard for your feet, legs, and lungs.

The crowds are astonishing, and they accentuate a problem westerners will always have with the Chinese: space. In America, everyone gets a good foot and a half circumference and must be asked permission to be touched. Not in China. People simply bustle along, jostle and shove eachother, without so much as an "excuse me." We usually try hard to accept local culture, but for some reason, it is exceptionally difficult to do so with space. Whenever someone shoves you in a line, you instantly react, typically with a four letter word and an elbow.

But there are advantages to being a westerner. As we trudged through a particularly narrow doorway, Nicole and I were pushed out of the way several times by those trying to get there first. Then, she tapped my shoulder.

"What?" I asked.

"We're much bigger than them," she said.

It was true. Suddenly, a great weight lifted off my shoulders. The next second, an old lady tried to jostle past me, and I promptly hip-checked her over a baby carriage. I looked back, and saw Nicole stiff-arming a couple of schoolgirls. Then, to the doorway. A middle aged man was barreling through with a full head of steam. He saw me coming, my right shoulder lowered. He knew what had happened. He tried to reverse direction. But, alas, it was too late. I slammed into him like a freight train, knocking him back into his wife and three children. We emerged from the doorway, serene and triumphant.

Actually, it was a peculiar thing, because we soon realized that everyone had taken a right when they reached the wall making that side particularly crowded. We decided to go back and try the left, and for some mysterious reason, the area was nearly empty. After an arduous climb, we found ourselves high above the valley, with no one to bother us. We opened a bottle of water, sat down by ourselves, and quite enjoyed the peace and quiet for a good long stretch. The wall really is quite impressive, especially in its great distance, and worthy of the homage it receives.