November 12, 2006

• What you’ve been waiting for…i think

  All right, finally managed to upload some pics from one of my trips out to the Great Wall of China! I actually went to a couple locations for the great wall, but more on that later.
  This is not the great wall, just some random neon castle on the way there…why? who knows?
  
  
  More photos from the drive there

  
  At last, the entrance to a super touristy section of the wall! Although we got there pretty early in the morning, so on the whole we were able to beat the crowds. Before we began the climb up though, we figured we should pick a place and a time to meet back in case our multitudinous group should become separated during their explorations. Luckily, near the entrance we spotted

  
  That’s right.because nothing says ancient endless empire like the great wall starbucks

  
  Now some of you may have conceived of the great wall as rather, well flat. This is very not true. It is in fact a fairly steep and ongoing trek.
  
  The handrails were added later, but another word of warning about chinese architects…they have no concept of consistent measurement. Steps would arbitrarily be very narrow or wide so you could not know from one moment to the next if the step would be wide enough for your foot to fit on. As an added bonus, the height changed with each step as well. I dont know, maybe in ancient china they had one yao ming and one midget sized chinese soldier patrol together and didnt want to show favoritism to either one, so they just randomly changed step height and width.

  
  Ted and I don’t see any mongols, but rainclouds are a-coming

  
  luckily, Jon was prepared for just such an eventuality

  
  And here is michelle in an artistic pose in one of the guardhouse windows. *sigh* guarding is SUCH hard work.
  
  
  Jon, Kai, Me, and my mom, once again joining us for the days adventures
  This section of the wall brought to you by…the 2008 olympics!
  didn’t believe me about the crowds? here are some vendors who set up shop on the wall.

  
  didn’t believe me about the steepess either, eh?
  After a moderately arduous climb, we finally reached the top, and early enough that not many crowds were at the north end of this section of wall. Several of our group members opted to try and make the peak at the other end and set off on a brisk hike. The rest of us decided it was late enough in the morning that we could be immature again. 

  
  From where we were standing at the north end of the restored section of the wall, we could see the unrestored part where we clearly were not supposed to go.
  So OF COURSE we decided to hop over the wall and go explore the area. If you didn’t see this one coming, you clearly do not know me at all
  
  Here is a pic someone took of ted, james and I from on high
  
  The best photos are always when you are breaking the law…also, i have a piece of the great wall now. Then it was time for us to climb back up before any guards got there to take us away to commie prison
  
  Since there were no guards to be seen, we opted to continue our fun and take a few pics hanging off the wall, to get a perspective for what the chinese soldiers AND the mongols felt like
  
  One of the net things i noticed was the abundance of graffiti on the wall
  and i figured as long as everyone else was leaving their immortal mark, oh what the hell, i would too.

  
  Well, my name can’t be written in kanji. what do you want from me? 

  Finally, we met back and did some shopping at the bottom of the wall before we left on the buses to go to the next destination
  

  -J

  • 8:13 pm
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