Trips: part I

Once again I’ve fallen behind on my blogging! I’ve gone on a couple trips since I last wrote and they were super fun.

The "Wild" Great Wall

One of China’s greatest treasures, built on the blood and sweat (and some say actual bones) of thousands upon thousands of Chinese laborers...it’s quite a site to see. There’s lots of different sections you can visit, and my previous visits had been to more tourist-y sections. However, this trip we went to Jiankou, a technically restricted section of the wall which is unrestored. There was no one selling a “I climbed the Great Wall t-shirt” up here!

gotta love old signs. debar clamber.
this section was called eagle flying upward. we managed to clamber :) up it

It was a pretty difficult hike, lots of climbing with hands and feet. There were some sections which looked like a forest, with nature reclaiming what man had tried to subdue. Other parts were so broken down we had to go a different route. On a funny note, while my friends and I felt we were doing some pretty difficult climbing, we kept running into this elderly Chinese man picking up trash who would ask us why we kept going the harder way.

new sign. lots o corn.

We stayed with Lao Zhao at his house/bed&breakfast. Many of the farmers here know they can do a good business with people wanting to see a section of wild wall.

obligatory jumping picture.

Being me, I got into a little trouble on my second day there. I ended up having an ENT problem (of the 5-year old variety—long story), but thanks to a friend of a friend I was able to see a doctor super quick and with no hassle once I got back to Beijing. In China, it’s all about guanxi!