Ch-Ch-Ch-China!

On my summer vacation I spent two weeks backpacking in this little place called China.  Maybe you've heard of it?  I'll give you a little overview of what I did.

I started off in Beijing:




It has really cool doorways.

 


Tiny alleyways everwhere called hutongs.





Some picturesque scenes if you look in the right places.

 



Really huge buildings everywhere.





The most crowded subways I have or will probably ever see.  You literally had to smash yourself into them.  A running start didn't hurt.

 


Some huge gates.




And, of course, Tiananmen Square.

 That's how I spent my first couple days in China: being lost, fighting the crowds, and generally wandering around one of the world's biggest cities.  From Beijing, I took two buses and rented a seat in a guy's van to get to a tiny town called Gubeikou.  It's a town that's supposed to be fairly true to the way of life before the industrialization of China.  It was certainly a welcome break from the hustle, bustle, and lung scarring way of life in Beijing (the air is so thick with pollutants the city is perpetually overcast.  Some days were so hazy I couldn't see the buildings on the other side of Tiananmen Square... and those are some big buildings).  Gubeikou is an incredible place.  It's tucked into a valley of lush, green mountains some 120 km from beijing, where a slow wide river bends around a steep mountain and past the town.  I'll lay off the overwrought sentences and let some pictures do the talking.  Oh yea, and there's that big wall there, too.

  

New wall, Great Wall.




Small town with guard towers (600 years old, unrestored).





This is the back wall of my guest house.  See the big stones?  Great wall.  Talk about efficiency.




Huge lily pads in the small river bisecting the town.  There were giant bullfrogs in there, too, but I was always too slow to get a picture.





Overgrown wall, the clump at the end, upon further inspection, turned out to be a collapsed guard tower.  I came upon several overgrown towers while I was hiking.




The view from my room.  That's a deteriorated section of the wall up there on the hill.





Big mountain with river.  The bumps on the hill are guard towers for the "Crouching Tiger" portion of the wall.  I did not make that up.





Unrestored wall, very long section.  It helps if you tilt your head a little bit when you look at this picture.



So that's how i spent my first day in Gubeikou, hiking and exploring original and untouched sections of the Great Wall.  The next day, I went to a touristy section of the wall called Jinshanling.  I call it touristy because it's a restored section and they've installed a cable car, but there really weren't many people there at all.  Pictures!!



Restored but rugged.




It's a very long wall.



As you can see from the pictures, this section is heavily restored (compared to the prior pictures) but still incredibly rugged.  It's also very steep, some sections I literally had to climb, hands and feet.  In other spots, the paths were marked with spraypaint: an arrow or an orange and blue circle, safe to climb.  Orange circle only, loose/dangerous stones.  Like this!



Oops I cut off the orange circle.

 It was incredible experience to see the wall, and I'm very happy with my two day survey.  It was great to see the state the wall is/would be in now after so many years, and how the wall was intended to be when it was more or less original.  It really is a magnificent structure.  It's dumbfounding to stand on a peak and see it stretched out in both directions, literally as far as your eye can see.  It took a lot of guts and a lot of man-power to build that wall.  It's truly a feat of engineering and persistence.  Or obstinance, I'm not sure which.

The next stop on my trip, after a brief foray back to Beijing to visit with the Silver Fisher's, was Xi'an, home of the Terracotta army.  It is rad.



Here they come!



Sooo many.





And each is unique.





Check out the detail.



The army is truly spectacular, and lives up to the hype.  I learned a lot about this historical relic.  Fact 1:  It's over 2000 years old.  I did not know that.  Fact 2:  Only a small fraction has actually been excavated.  Most of the army is till undergound, and they do work every night to further excavate.  Fact 3:  Almost all of the soldiers have been rebuilt.  When they dig them out, they look like this:



Just a big ol' mess of smashed up clay.




In the "General's Pit," they have some separation.




They piece them together like this and fill in the gaps with new clay.



I guess 2200years of seepage and erosion takes it's toll.  Not to mention that- Fact 4: 500 years after the army was completed (around 200 A.D.) the current emporer didn't like that idea that this army existed, so he burned the whole complex down.  That's why, in the picture of the smashed up soldiers, the dirt is black just around the rim of the pit.  That is the scorched remains of the original wooden complex.  Fact 5 (last one):  There are actually three different excavation sites, organized in the manner of a functional army.  One, fully excavated, is a small area where the generals, royals and brians behind the army hung out and did there thing.  Another pit, almost entirely unexcavated, is full of the specialized soldiers: chariots, cavalry, archers and the like.  The main pit, the one we're used to seeing, is the bulk of the general infantry, divided into rank and file in accurate battle formation.  Fact 6 (last one, I promise this time):  The rank and status of the soldiers can be determined by what they're wearing.  The more armor, the hire the rank.  The position of their arms and bodies can tell you what they're function as a soldier was.



From left to right:  Infantry (archer), middle ranking officer, General, cavalryman.

 The Terracotta army is truly an incredible cultural relic, and I feel lucky to have seen it.  But like the Great Wall, it makes me wonder if it is a symbol of the people of China, or rather a result of one man's imperious egoism.  In any case, they're both awesome to see.

After all this historically significant exploring, I felt a longing to see some of China's natural beauty.  I went hiking on a mountain called Hua Shan, one of the five sacred mountains of Taoism.  Check out the views:



Oops, couldn't resist.




Incredible vistas at every turn.




This mountain has been an inspiration to Chinese artists or thousands of years, a tradition carried into today.




Sunrise hike.




This is how goods are transported up the mountain.  Good ol' fashioned people power.  It's also why a small bottle of water will cost you an arm and a leg, which makes hiking difficult (insert bad joke sound).

 Hua Shan is known for it's views, but it's also known for being one of the world's most dangerous hikes.  Considering I've already biked the world's most dangerous road, how could I resist??  To allay your fears (mom), the government has recognized that the popularity of the mountain and the state of the trails were in conflict, so they've been rebuilding the whole route for a few years.  I'll show you some of the new trail, and some of the old trail.


New trail. Steep.




New trail. Stairs.




Old trail next to new trail.




Old trail, from above.




New trail, picture failing to capture extreme angle of descent.



As you can see, this was no walk in the park.  And considering I was wearing my entire pack plus carrying water (about 35 pounds) the 14km total (just to the hostel) at an estimated average grade of 20 % was downright challenging.  When I got down, my pack looked like this:   



Sweaty.



 This is probably one of those things you don't want to know, but I actually sweated through almost all of my clothes (inside the pack) and destroyed a book (sorry Jaclyn).  It was tough going but extremely rewarding.

But wait, you say.  That trail is steep, and indeed dangerous, but the most dangerous trail in the world?  No, I answer you, not that trail, but this trail:



Ok, so you actually have to strap yourself to a guide wire to do this, so the actual risk isn't that great. Unless, of course, you find yourself overwhelmed by the heart crushing adrenaline rush you get from standing on a plank stuck into a 700 foot high sheer granite cliff.  Quite the experience.  And the two way traffic doesn't help either.



Sorry mom.



So after Hua Shan, I headed back to Beijing where I met up with Jaclyn and competed with all the domestic tourists to see the sights.  So that's my trip to China.  I have about a thousand more pictures, and some good stories for you all.  I can't give it all up in the blog though, because then what would we talk about when I make it home??

I'll probably get in trouble for this, but I'd like to leave you with this last image: