Conquering China: Part 2

Day 4: April 30
Woke up early to catch the van from our hostel that drove us 2.5 hours outside Beijing to Jinshanling--the starting point for our 9+km hike on the Great Wall. Because I'm definitely not a morning person, I went to sleep immediately upon getting into the van and was a bit startled to wake up as we drove off the paved road, over a tiny bridge and into a tiny farming community at the base of the mountains.
We stopped almost immediately after I woke up and the driver explained that a local guide would walk us through the mountains to the base of the Wall, then we should turn right and head to Simatai where he would pick us up in 5 hours. It was only 9ish, but well over 90 degrees F...woo hoo!
There were already local peddlers hot on our tails, trying to convince us to buy postcards, t-shirts or water as we made our way to Jinshanling. It took about 45 minutes to hike to the wall, and having walked literally hundreds (if not thousands) of stairs during our 9km, I still say that the mountain-hike part was the hardest leg of the trip.
Before I really started to look into it, I had errantly thought that walking along the Great Wall would be pretty easy--stemming from my crazy idea that the Wall is level. Quite to the contrary, the Wall was built along mountaintops to make it even more imposing and difficult to sneak up on. Each of the observation towers has a unique and confusing set of stairs on their approach to slow down invaders even further. (For example, there are several sections where the stairs drop 2 stories down, then 2 stories right back up with only about 10 feet at the bottom)
The area close to Jinshanling appeared to have been renovated at some point in the past few decades, but as we walked a bit more there were many passages where the stairs had been worn away or in extreme cases, where we had to come down off the wall completely and hike next to it.
It was an extremely challenging hike, but we had perfect weather and the view was amazing.
Easily my favorite day in China!

Day 5: May 1
Slept in a bit to recover from the Great Wall hike, ate some breakfast and headed out to Yonghegong (the Lama Temple), Beijing's main Tibetan Buddhist temple, for some sightseeing.
Though we couldn't take pictures of anything inside the temple buildings, we saw several amazing Buddha statues, including an enormous 18m Maitreya Buddha carved from a single 28m sandalwood tree, and a large collection of Qing Dynasty Tibetan articles on display.
From there, we caught a cab and went to the Silk Market, 8-floors of booths where people were hawking everything from Lacoste polos to silk scarves to Chairman Mao alarm clocks. We spent a few hours souvenir shopping and bargaining before heading back to our hostel and a yummy dinner in our hutong.

Day 6: May 2
We had decided to skip the Forbidden City on May 1st because it was Labor Day in China and we hoped that MAYBE the 2nd would be less crowded. (Famous for its yellow-tiled rooves, expansive courtyards and several distinct neighborhoods within the 200 acre complex, we figured that even if it was crowded it would still be manageable... its huge!)
Not the case.
In fact, I think that I saw more people in the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square on May 2nd than I've seen at any one time in my entire life. It was beyond stunning--overwhelming even. It reminded me of a photograph of Coney Island during a heat wave in the 40s where it's just this wild mass of people and faces that doesn't look like a refreshing trip to the beach at all... that's close to what some places in the Forbidden City looked like when we were there.
Once we finally got tickets and headed inside, we were not surprised to find that the main Hall, the Hall of Supreme Harmony (Taihedian), was under renovation for the olympics. What was surprising, was the decision to have a drawn-to-scale image of 'what we would be seeing if the building was visible' painted on the blue tarp separating the public from the renovation crew. This struck me as something between extremely humorous and a slap in the face.
We pushed and shoved our way through various gates to stand somewhere approximate to a famous hall, then were either unable to get any closer or were swept away by the tide of people.
Taking refuge in a quiet area of the northern gardens, I was approached by two school-aged Chinese children, 10 and 13 years old. They were a brother-sister pair who spoke surprisingly good English for their age and wanted to take a picture with me. Once we had done that they thanked me and wandered off, only to re-appear within minutes to ask if I'd eat lunch with them. Of course I said yes, and enjoyed what was unquestionably my favorite half-hour inside the City.
After lunch we trudged on a bit more, but exhausted from the crowds and the sun we decided to make our way back toward the exit and Tiananmen Gate. Imagine our surprise, however when we found a Starbucks in one of the main courtyards! The Forbidden City was completed in the early 1400s and remained closed to those without imperial permission until 1911... but now they have Starbucks. These are the moments when globalization feels almost overwhelming to me.
After Starbucks we got tickets to go up onto Tiananmen Gate and look out over the Square. We met some Japanese people on the gate and had a less-than-serious conversation about how Tokyo Disney was probably even more mobbed for Golden Week... it's funny because it probably wasn't far from the truth.
Gave up on the tourist areas and decided to grab some food from the street vendors in the area where we grabbed lunch on our first day in Beijing. It was SO good! My favorite food in China was always from the street vendors!
Relaxed a bit before catching the van to see an acrobatics show, which was also great fun.
Then grabbed dinner again in our hutong with some people from our hostel that we'd been spending time with. Even though we weren't out too late, it still seemed late when we realized that we'd be waking up in only a few hours to catch our flight to Xi'an...
looking about as awake as I felt...