In retrospect I probably couldn't have done more to sabotage my own trip preparation than what I did the night before we left for the Great Wall.
We were told to be ready to leave by 9:30AM on Saturday. That Friday night before the trip, my friend Marc (a fellow member of the tribe) and I decided to go to Chabad Beijing for Shabbat dinner. We had been a few times before and we'd had a lot of fun eating GREAT (and free) Jewish food, meeting some other Beijing Jews, and saying plenty of L'chaims with the Rabbis. After eating huge portions of brisket, potato koogel, and having some very interesting conversation with the Rabbi at our table, the head Rabbi started the usual post-dinner singing-and-l'chaim session. This is always a lot of fun both because the Rabbi has an amazingly operatic voice, and because everyone had usually done their own fair share of L'chaims by this time of the night and were only too eager to sing songs and bang on the tables. This Shabbat was during passover so Marc, myself, along with the rest of the friends we made at the table saw this Shabbat as an opportune time to sample the various kinds of kosher-for-passover wine. Looking back now, I don't think the word "sampling" really does what we did justice. It's probably more accurate to say that Marc, myself and the rest of the people at my table along with the Rabbis took it upon ourselves to ensure there wasn't any leftover wine when Passover ended.
Soon after exhausting our voices (and Chabad's wine supply), Marc and I made our way to WuDaoKou, a college bar area to meet up with a few friends. As soon as we met them, they informed us that Paul Oakenfold, a world-famous DJ was going to be performing at one of Beijing's biggest clubs, GT Banana. Without hesitating for a second to consider the physically intense trip we were leaving for the next morning, we hopped into a cab for GT Banana. Once inside we met up with some other friends and had fun on the dance floor, which is unique from any club I have ever been to because there are hydraulic lifts that make the dance floor bounce to the music. I was having so much fun that I decided not to leave until around 4:30AM.
When my alarm clock sounded at 9AM on Saturday morning, it became very clear to me that going to a club until 4:30AM the night before a hiking trip was far from the smartest idea I had ever had. I didn't really have time to dwell on my poor decisions very long since I had to catch the bus so I shot out of bed, got dressed, and threw clothes into my backpack.
Only once I was on the bus did the physical effects of the night before become apparent. I was cramped. Everywhere. Luckily, the three hour bus ride gave Marc and I some time to recover and after nursing several liters of water, I felt better.
The area where we were hiking was a lot colder than I expected and the jacket I brought wasn't warm enough so I bought a "I hiked the Great Wall" sweatshirt at the entrance (even though that statement wasn't accurate at the time I bought the sweatshirt).
And now for some Great Wall Facts/Myths taught to us by our program director and trip leader, Brian Eyler...
The Great Wall is NOT visible from space
The Great Wall is NOT one wall, it is broken into dozens of sections
The Great Wall was NOT built solely for defense, not communication (if you've seen the Disney movie 'Mulan' you know what I'm talking about).
Some parts of the Great Wall are simply mounds of stacked dirt and rocks that were built in ancient dynasties while some parts have been built up by succeeding dynasties into very sturdy brick walls. It just depended on how "important" that part of the wall was deemed for defense. This was sometimes an very arbitrary process and as a result some areas that seem completely impassable for a foreign army also have the wall running through them. For example, the part of the wall we hiked stands in a area of very rough terrain where there only used to be a small Chinese village. One night a few foreign rebels came in and killed two people in the village. When the people of the surrounding villages go together to track and capture the rebels, they were caught in a huge ambush and were decimated by the foreign troops. In response the Chinese emperor built up the wall as a protection measure. As we hiked along the wall we couldn't stop commenting on how ridiculous it was for them to build a massive wall in such a mountainous area.
The hike along the wall was really beautiful despite the fact that there were a few vendors following us for miles as we hiked trying to sell us random keychains and postcards. The air was fresh and cool, the scenery was beautiful, and I really felt great despite my lack of sleep and the long night I had prior to going on the trip. We walked along the wall until that evening when we hiked down from the wall and into a nearby village where we stayed that night. The village family we met with runs a small, rustic inn for people to stay in on great wall trips. This sort of business has become very popular for people who live in rural areas because it gives them a very significant source of income outside of harvesting crops. For dinner they made some of the best Kung Pao chicken I've had in China along with some other spicy dishes. The grandfather of the family also lit fireworks and made a bonfire that we sat around to stay warm. While we hung out around the fire our program director told us some hilarious stories about his first experience studying abroad in China.
That night, we split up into sleeping groups of five. We were brought into our bedroom which consisted of a massive "kang", or huge brick bed with a thin mattress on top of it and piles of blankets. Underneath the brick kang, they put warm coals to make the kang warm to sleep on. Five of us piled onto the kang to go to sleep at around 12AM. It had been a long day and we were going to wake up EARLY for a sunrise hike to the highest point that the Great Wall reaches.
At 4:30AM, our program director came in to wake us up. Keep in mind I had gone to sleep at 4:30AM the day before. It was pitch black and cold outside when we started the hike and our director told us that that morning hike would be much much harder than hike along the wall. He informed us that the morning hike was roughly divided into three parts that he named 1)The portion of improbable death, 2)The portion of probable death, 3)The portion of certain death. We went through the hills of a village and made our way up onto higher and stepper hills. At certain points the hills got so steep that you had to hang on to trees and roots to pull yourself up the hill. As we hiked it became gradually lighter and warmer outside and we could see the wall at the top of this extremely steep hill. When we finally got to the top we caught our breath and got ready to see the sunrise. It was an amazing sight watching the sun break over the mountains in the distance and come over the wall and was definitely worth the hard hike. After spending some time at the top and take tons of pictures, we hiked back down the steep hills which were equally difficult on the way down as on the way up. When we got back to the village we had breakfast and started our hike out of the park area.
At this point all of my exhaustion started to hit me. I was doing really well the whole weekend and loved all the hiking. When we got to the end of the park there was a huge zipline that we took down one by one to get to the gate area. As soon as I got off the zipline I sat up against a wall of one of the buildings at the exit of the park to wait for everyone to get down. Within five minutes I was fast asleep and someone had to wake me up when everyone started heading for the bus. I slept the entire ride back.
I would add pictures but this site is extremely slow at adding photos and sometimes makes my computer freeze. The best way to see pictures is on my facebook profile.
