Leaving: the better half
Let’s just get out of this place already, okay? I’m limiting myself to 25 pictures for this whole post. Appreciate that.
This question was floated in the last post: Did Jesse and Jane arrive on time? No. No, they did not. They were late because for some-reason-or-another they couldn’t find a taxi, and I had to wait up for them so I could meet them in the lobby. I can’t remember what time they got in, but it was 5 minutes shy of the time I predicted which if you recall they just thought was ridiculous. I think I said 1am. So, that was 5 hours of sleep right there, at best.
But it’s never at best for me, especially not when there’s a bunch of hubbub before sleep. I’ve probably said it 100x times already, but this is the conclusion and you repeat yourself in the conclusion. I’m a stupidly light sleeper. So I got 3–4 hours of sleep before a half-day hike I had done no training for.
I mention “training” because there was a 30-minute uphill part. It was pretty fucking steeply uphill towards the end. I couldn’t even look back for fear I’d topple over.
Outside the hotel, the guides picked us up in a white van and drove us hours outside of the city. We got past the pollution, mostly. Our guide’s name was Stephen and he was fantastic.
Oh, I remember backstory: we didn’t even know if we were going to do the hike because of the snow situation. It can get icy and unsafe. But when we woke the next morning and got to the bus, nope, Stephen informed us we’re doing the hike. I was so glad I ate whatever meager breakfast I did. The guides didn’t have food, and all I brought was, let’s all say it together: M&Ms. I would have done better if I’d brought more carbs. This is why, in the pictures, if you see it, since there are only going to be 25, you’ll notice Jane isn’t wearing the best shoes for this.
We started off in an agricultural area. To the right are a bunch of fields carved into the mountainside. In the distance you can see the watchtowers of the Great Wall. We were hiking up to one of those. I don’t know which one. The high one.
As we got higher it got more treacherous.
Then we got to the top and I huddled here against this wall, so relieved the rest was downhill. The steps directly to my left on the wall (not pictured) were missing big chunks. It would be a 3-hour hike to get to the restored section of the wall.
The snow was making my camera crazy. White glare! Also, I don’t know how he’s standing that close to the ledge. He is tres insane. That’s my coat he’s carrying, and for a while I had him carry my camera too. I was dying. (Weirdly, if it’s flat or going downhill, I can walk for days. Something about uphill or jogging is too much for my heart, even when I do train for it.)
To get to this ledge we had to climb a ladder made out of sticks, I shit you not. And there was another one after it. Madness.
We took this picture and I could not go near those walls. I had to sit down and then back up into them. Pretty much, on this tower, I did no standing except in the very, very middle, and even that was a huge risk. The uphill strain combined with the height thing made me look like a complete pansy early on… and it was my idea to do this! Whatever. Pride. Eh.
Doing a 180°, we had this.
And, keenly aware of my 25 picture limit, I’m skipping over a slew of pictures. Here’s what made the cut…
I had just let Jesse use my camera at this point. I was wiped. Wanted pictures. Needed carbs.
Some parts of the wall were pretty slippery, but some parts, like this one, had powdered snow.
None of the pictures show the parts of the wall that were impassable. We had to climb down and walk beside the wall at points.
But here we are, hitting the renovated section. The signs warn visitors against going further.
We finished the hike by deciding between local food and Subway, and though I wanted anything-but-China, I knew in my heart the right answer. We ate spicy chicken (good chicken!) and rice.
While Stephen and the driver weren’t around, I started discussing with Jesse and Jane how much we would tip them. You don’t typically tip in China, but it was made very clear by the hiking company that the guides make their money primarily from tips. I decided to do 100 yuan, which is like $15, and tip the driver 50 yuan. I huddled with them and said, “This is what I’m going to do, just so you know, because we need to tip them, but you guys do what you think is good.” And they said, “Okay.” And fast forward, we got out of the car at our hotel and they didn’t tip them and I was so embarrassed and Jesse was like, “Well I thought you were covering it!” and I was like, “$15 is like a 4% tip, do I look like a 4% tipper?” — okay I didn’t know the math in that moment, but I knew it was bad — and Jesse said he misunderstood me, that was all, and I was thinking, the bus is still parked there, go stop them, go make it right, but they didn’t and we went into the hotel and I was like, I am so leaving this place, you thought I was leaving before, well I am leaving 10x worse than that, and to this day I remember how they didn’t tip and it bothers me because I think tipping says something about you and I accidentally said 4%.
Come to think of it, they never even paid me their 2.6% for my “covering it” 4%. And no, “Hey thanks Jaimie for getting that tip!” What the what.
HEY. HEY, HEY. I WAS LEAVING THE NEXT DAY.
So none of that mattered. Nothing mattered.
That night at the hotel, we just recovered from the hike.
The next morning, we took the bus and subway down to Tiananmen Square. That’s how it looks in English, but in China they break the word up with half a dozen apostrophes so it’s difficult to read… like, T’ian’An’me’n Squ’are. But there was English in the subway, so everything was super easy. I was playing China on easy mode, and like a video game, I was going to turn it off later that day.
The pollution was godawful. But I was like…
The square was enormous, but the effect was completely lost on me since I felt like I was in a circus tent. I couldn’t see the buildings on either side unless I got closer. I couldn’t see how this, the center of the city, was really quite audacious in its flaunting of wasted real estate. At least, that’s the impression I’d imagine it might have, had it had one.
Like a good American, I should say that a protest against the government happened in this square in 1989 but apparently most Chinese people don’t know about it. The Chinese government has made it hush-hush and everyone’s forgotten. Because of the Bible in my hotel room, I question this story now.
Please notice the blue suitcase that Jesse was rolling around. It’s not in any more pictures because I was trying my hardest to forget it existed, and also to get away from it.
I’m going to plug the 1988 Best Picture winner The Last Emperor, which was filmed here, which will give you a good history of this place too, and apologize for the awful pictures that follow.
This river had a name like “The River of Perpetual Happiness” but I can’t remember it now. How cool does it look frozen like that?
All the places in the Forbidden City had extravagant names.
To either side of the front section of the City/Palace were gardened areas. This was to our right. We had to breeze through all of this, since I didn’t have much time before my flight. We had 1 hour in the City total. Kind of a bummer, since there was a lot to explore.
See the cobblestones?
Imagine a suitcase being rolled, all four wheels, across it.
Clunkclunkclunklunklunklunklunkunkunkunkunkunkunkunk
After we came back to the main, more populated area, Jane asked Jesse if he couldn’t carry their suitcase. And he hurled it at her. It went sailing across the stonework — I’m surprised it didn’t fall — and he said, “You carry it.”
And I promptly turned away and left them to that.
But after a minute of blessed silence, the suitcase inevitably followed.
Clunkclunkclunklunklunklunklunkunkunkunkunkunkunkunk
The tiff had gone full circle and Jesse was rolling it again. The reason they had the suitcase is they were going straight to the train station once we got out of there.
You can imagine how in a pre-industrial time, vast swaths of non-grass would look impressive. I want sky.
Awful picture, but there was nothing to be done for it. In each middle area there was a place for the emperor. I think his bedroom was in one of them. This one might have been his throne room. But there was a hoard of people in front of each of them, and very little light inside, for either photography or the naked eye, so it was a, let’s all say it together: letdown.
This might have been the emperor’s mother’s bedroom.
This is one of the watchtowers on the corner of the city, which was surrounded by a moat. And the last picture in my photo reel. I gave up at this point. I became giddy, because I was leaving within hours.
Clunkclunkclunklunklunklun —
When we left the City, a pretty Chinese girl gave Jesse and his suitcase a filthy look. After a beat, he laughed nervously and said as if it had spontaneously occurred to him, “This thing is kind of loud, isn’t it?”
He carried it for about 200 feet.
“But it’s heavy.”
— unkclunkclunkclunklunkunkunkunkunkunk
The idea was putted around that maybe we would eat lunch somewhere before we parted ways, but everything I saw was Chinese food and I just couldn’t stomach the thought. I apologized for that, because you know, that’s the polite way to leave things, isn’t it? And I did want to, I guess. Leave things politely. But whatever.
I showered in the hotel. Called a taxi. Did the airport thing, did the long flight thing.
The bathrooms on the plane were horrible. I can’t remember if I said this when describing my journey to China. They were pretty bad then, but they were immensely worse on the flight home. The floor was sticky with piss, and both the toilet paper and the paper towels had been used up. I shuddered to think how many germs I was touching unlocking that door to find a better stocked bathroom across the aisle. Fortunately I slept most of the flight and got away with using the bathroom only 3 times.
This is the end
Congratulations for making it this far, for listening to my whining this whole time. It feels anticlimactic, doesn’t it? I just reread the previous sentence, and I should say thank you. Thank you, not congratulations. You’d think I attended Trump University.
Speaking of Trump, one of my fondest memories of China will be how much they loved Obama there. When we left the Great Wall area, some vendors were selling a T-shirt that said “MAOBAMA” with a picture of Obama in the iconic red, white & blue “HOPE” gradient of his 2008 campaign. They kept calling at me like I’d love a shirt like that, and I kept thinking only a small percentage of Americans would ever wear it, and I don’t think they travel much anyway. It’s such a Chinese sentiment: Mao + Obama = better.
“Well, I’m back,” I said when I arrived home. I adjusted to the 12-hour time change. One year later, here I am, having finally put it to rest.
But it will never really heal.
(Two fucking Lord of the Rings references — they’re all I’ve got.)
Maybe I’ll write some overall thoughts later, if I have them. At the moment, I can’t imagine that I will. But who knows: maybe one of you will have a question that will blossom into something interesting. For now, again, thank you for reading, for feeling, for participating. I joke about the wound never really healing, but it’s amazing that it’s healed this much. You were a part of that.
