The Great Wall

It's Day 4 now and our last final day in the Beijing area. This morning we are taking a group trip and we are off to see the Great Wall of China. We left the hostel at about 10a and I was a little concerned because I had been told to arrive very early at the wall. This is one of the joys of booking through a small size travel company and arranging a private tour through the hostel using local guides...we visited a little touristed section the Great Wall that was in great condition and which was visited by perhaps a total of 20 other fellow tourists while we where there. How cool is that?!!!



I read some horror stories of the most visited section, Badaling, and the tours originating from Beijing to there. The crowds are suffocating and you can be forced to endure other add-ons such as visits to jade factories or other money-making ventures. Thankfully, our trip was nothing more than an authentic Great Wall experience. This section was completed about 300 or so years ago, one of the final sections completed to keep out the Monguls to the north. The wall was completed in sections, so some places are nearly 2000 years old and barely a trace can be found while others are still fairly new and in their infancy. This section was particularly steep, as I envision most sections of the wall are. We probably walked along the top for about 2 miles and probably ascended 1500 to 2000 vertical feet from the point where we started. The views were tremendous and you could see the snaking wall go on for miles along the ridges and mountaintops in both directions.







On the way back to Beijing and while still in the countryside, we stopped in at a small local establishment and had a very late lunch. The owners and some of their staff were busy outside skinning some unfortunate beast who was probably the tasty meal for some fortunate souls the following day. Meals in China are served banquet or "family-style", which is to say that several dishes are ordered with large portions and it is a free-for-all for everyone at the table to partake. For somebody that was scared of ASian food just a couple years ago, I find most of the dishes to be quite good and this restaurant was no exception. Tofu typically shows on the menu. We had green string bean mixed in with pork. Of course there is rice, and other meaty and veggie dishes (usually one of each mixed together). But the special menu item today was...donkey. Yum! I had my reservations. The meat was served cold and it looked exactly like roast beef. And...I loved it! It's very healthy and a lean meat as well.



Donkey wasn't the only culinary experience of the day. That night, our small group visited the night food market at the center of the city. There are lines and lines of booths hawking tasty unique dishes for the locals and appalled tourists alike. You had your choice of seahorse, locusts, fried strawberry/kiwi, snake and silkworm larvae. I decided to go for most bang for my yuan and give the fried scorpion a try. For about $1.50, you pick a kebab of about five LIVE small scorpions and they deepfry them for you for about 30 seconds so that they are served quite fresh. Scorpion is quite crunchy, as you might imagine. Just be sure to eat it tailfirst, or with the tail broken off, as I am sure the intact stinger might just hurt the tongue a little.