Another brick in the Wall

After living here since December 2013, I am finally touring China!

As I write this, I’m on Day Two of a 10-or-so-day tour within China, but nowhere near Guangzhou. I left there on Thursday and headed to Beijing to meet up with a group that’s mostly from America, but there are a couple of Torontonians, Vancouverites, Ozzies and Kiwis.

Today, we climbed a part of the Great Wall of China, which is something I’ve wanted to do since I found out I was being posted to China. I opted for the “harder” side, as opposed to the “hard,” and it was a piece of cake. I think 60 minutes per day on the elliptical has finally paid off.

Forbidden City

These are the steps I climbed today. I went to the one directly on the top center of the photo from the green building. I finished really early and then went up the other side to where this photo was taken from. I wound up pretty much coaching another lady through the end of it. She was having some trouble!

So far, the tour has been great. The mix of people is good: two Kiwis, two Ozzies, three sets of people from Florida, one group from Michigan, four people here alone and people from Atlanta and other random folks from mostly California and New York.

We do have some older people who are abnormally (in my opinion) focused on tipping. The subject’s been brought up four times. Thing is, there is no tipping in China. It’s an American thing, and other western country natives hate us for it. Let it go.

Tonight, we had a free evening for dinner on our own, and I met up with a former colleague from Guangzhou who’s now posted here. Just got back and boy, it was good. Dumplings are just awesome. Plus, it was nice catching up with the colleague, who really is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.

Tinnamen Square gate

There’s an early morning tomorrow – so early that I’m still debating just staying up and finding the game somehow. I figure come wake up time, it’ll be about over. The flight is at 8.

We’re headed to the Terra Cotta Warriors, in X’ian, a 2-hour flight from Beijing. This is my No. 2 highlight-to-be on the trip. The Wall is an absolute No. 1. I was not leaving this country until I saw that, and boy, it was worth it. I mean, I only saw a little part of it, but I’m happy about it.

After that, it’s Chengdu, where the panda research center is, and then to Shanghai. We fly between all those cities and I figured I’d be sick of flying by that time, so I’m taking the high-speed train home. It’s seven hours, and the trains run on  time. The airplanes, not so much.

Anyway, I am thrilled to finally be seeing China. It really is a cool country, and Beijing is just phenomenal. We’ve really only hit highlights; you could spend a week here and not see it all. Or come close to tasting it all.

I’d planned this as a swan song trip when I was targeted to leave in December but now that’s been extended. That means I’ve got more travel coming up, and it’s mind-boggling what I intend to do in the next month: Bon Jovi in Macau, Kathmandu, Taipei.

My passport is raising eyebrows on this trip. I figured Beijing would see enough of the black ones, but the ladies at this hotel were completely confused. I have 27 exit stamps and they’d just never seen that before. It’s really bizarre because there aren’t many entry stamps. I use the personal passport for travel outside of China, so my black one only shows when I left, not where I went to. (I do use it to Hong Kong, but they only give you little pieces of paper instead of stamps, which is good because I’d be out of space by now!)

When I checked in, it was late because the directions I had were bad. (I’d taken them off the hotel site, go figure.) I got in just after midnight and I just wanted to go to bed. The ladies both tried to convey something to me, which they spoke in Mandarin into their iPhones. One then pointed to my visa page and pointed to the translation, which said, “Can you put it here?” Needless to say, I had no idea what that meant.

And I couldn’t figure out why they just didn’t keep my passport – there was a collection of U.S. ones on the desk – and give me a room key. I was so pooped.

After more speaking into iPhones, the other lady (who was maybe 23), showed me the translation. Closing my passport, she pointed to the words on the iPhone screen: “Can you leave it here?” I realized she meant my passport in its entirety. She was trying to convey exactly why I had been wondering about.

The thing is, we’re so reliant on those stupid tech tools we’ve forgotten how to communicate. Honestly, had she just mimed putting my passport with the others and handed me a key, I would have figured it out, but both ladies were just so insistent on speaking into their devices for the “correct” translation that never occurred to them.

All right, I am going to upload this now. The internet is taking forever, so right now there’s no photo to go with the photo reference, but it’ll make more sense later.