JonahWeiland.com

I realize that after reading this entry you may label me as some sort of gum loving, mental deficient with too much time on his hands, but that’s OK by me.

One day when I was in China last year, we were in the supermarket and I got a sudden craving for gum. I don’t know where that came from because I’m not much of a gum chewer, but there I was in Hong Kong craving gum. I checked out the selection and decided upon Wrigley’s Extra Lemon-Pear Gum (with high-powered tooth whitening action!). It sounded deliciously bizarre, so I had to try it.

I fell in love with this fucking gum. It really was the best tasting gum I ever tried. It comes in chicklet form, not in the strips, and had a flavor that lasted and was very unique. I think what really appealed to me was its flavor. While this has changed a bit recently, most gum sold in the United States still tastes primarily like toothpaste. Wintergreen, Peppermint, Cinnamon – guys, if I want to chew toothpaste all day, I’ll suck on a tube of Aqua Fresh, OK? Let’s get some variety here. I’ve looked for this very same gum, but they don’t seem to distribute it here in the States. When I left China I loaded up on gum, but that only lasted me about a month. Since October of 2005, I’ve been very much without my Lemony-Peary goodness.

Recently, my friend Stephen told me his wife Dorothy was going on a last minute trip to China for four days and asked if I wanted anything from there. I thought about it for a bit and the only thing I really wanted was more of that damned gum! I scanned the last remaining pack of gum I had, sent the image to Dorothy and she said she’d do her best for me. How much did I want? “Oh, I’d be willing to pay for up to $50 worth,” knowing that would give me plenty of gum.

Off she went to China and came back with over 1000 pieces of gum for me. Dorothy is now one of my favorite women in the whole wide world.

Look at this picture (click to enlarge) – that’s 18 bottles of gum, 56 pieces per bottle. Why 56 pieces? I have no idea. Oh, and you know that putting gum in medicine style bottles would never fly in the United States. Some parent would start freaking out about how we’re putting gum in drug bottles and how it sends a bad message to the children (what message? Cmon!). The little bottle at the top of the pyramid was a small bottle of gum Dorothy bought Stephen. Now, Stephen pointed out he’s not a big fan of gum either, but actually enjoyed this stuff quite a lot. All told, the three boxes cost about $20. Not too shabby.

But here’s where the story gets odd. So, Dorothy’s packing her bags for the return trip home and places these three boxes of gum into her carry on bags. As she’s packing she thinks to herself something like, “Oh, crap! They’ll never let me take this home. They’ll probably think those bottles are filled with Ecstasy or some other form of drug! I’m screwed!” She packed the boxes away hoping for the best.

Security gave her no grief over the gum. Didn’t even bat an eye. But they did hassle her about something else she tried to bring on the plane – breast milk.

See, Dorothy is nursing her and Stephen’s beautiful baby Sienna right now and while she was away she pumped so that when she got home she’d have a new stash for Sienna. But with airport security measures more stringent lately, there was no way they were letting Dorothy board that plane with “potentially” explosive and lethal breast milk. 18 bottles of gum potentially filled with exploding gum? Sure, why not. Breast milk? “Ma’am, that’s now the property of the Chinese government.” Just more proof how retarded airport security is these days.

I’m happy, though. I’ve got my gum.

Christ, I sound like “Rainman” or something. “I like gum! I like gum! Gum is my friend! I like gum!”

Finally, I present the last chapter in my China travel journal. I’ve also posted the final eight photos from my trip in the gallery here. There’s some nice pictures of buildings in Hong Kong at night, plus one of some street performer dressed up as Spider-Man for no good reason. Hong Kong can be a very weird place.

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Saturday in China was mostly a travel day. We woke up super early, 6:00 AM, to get to the Airport by 7:00 for our 9:00 flight back to Hong Kong. Our hotel said Chinese immigration could take some time, so it was really smart to get there early. Our driver got us to the airport at 7:00 AM sharp and the hotel was right– Chinese immigration was a slow and tedious process that took place in a rather hot room filled with hundreds and hundreds of people. It actually reminded me of the security queues at LAX– complete chaos and poorly managed. Lines going in all sorts of directions, criss-crossing each other. It took about an hour to get through and we still had an hour to kill, so Sharon and I used up the last of our Chinese currency by buying some noodle soup at a restaurant in the airport.

The flight back to Hong Kong was uneventful and pretty much the same as when we went to Beijing. Once again “The Sounds of Silence” played as we sat on the tarmac in Beijing and Hong Kong. The flight back to Hong Kong was far more turbulent than going there, bad enough that I’d look back to Sharon in the aisle behind me to check on her every once in a while. Sharon doesn’t do well with the flying, so I wanted to make sure she was cool. She was cool. Not the worst turbulence I’ve ever been through, but wild enough that it couldn’t be ignored.

The movie on the flight back to Hong Kong was some Chinese action film. There was no English subtitling or audio track, so I had no idea what was going on, other than it seemed there were a lot of guns pointed at a lot of women’s heads throughout the film.

Once we landed in Hong Kong we made our way through Hong Kong immigration, caught the Airport Express back to Hong Kong Island, picked up a cab at Central and made our way back to Parkview where Jimmy was waiting for us around 2:30. We hung around the house, packed up for our return home Sunday afternoon, and really didn’t do anything until dinner that night.

There was one final thing I wanted to get done before leaving Hong Kong. Carrie bought Jimmy a really cool wallet at Shanghai Tang’s, an upscale clothing store in Hong Kong (they have a store now in New York City and Oahu, apparently), and I really wanted to check out the store. So, we left the apartment around 6:30 and took a cab down to Central, then walked around for a while trying to find Shanghai Tang. My faith in Jimmy’s ability as White Super Action Tour Guide was starting to fade as it appeared we were just going in circles, but soon enough we found the store and my faith was restored. We walked around for a bit, checked out the merch and I finally decided I’d buy the wallet myself. The wallet pictured to the right is the one I got, but the star is red, not blue. Also, the price in Hong Kong is about $20 cheaper than on their Web site. In fact, pretty much everything in the store itself is 25% or more cheaper than on the Web site. I saw some tee-shirts in the store I liked, but I have a problem spending $35 on tee-shirts.

After I made my purchase we started our walk towards Lan Kwai Fong for some food and booze. About 10 minutes after leaving Shanghai Tang’s I realized I left my umbrella there. Oh well, it was a cheap piece of shit anyway and I didn’t want to make the walk back. Plus, it wasn’t raining so I wasn’t going to worry about it.

On the way to Lan Kwai Fong we stopped at some street markets and tiny stores along the way, seeing if there were any other bargains we might be able to find. At some point during our shopping Sharon lost her umbrella, too. The Weiland’s were not doing well keeping track of our umbrellas.

By the time we got to Lan Kwai Fong, we were all starving. Lan Kwai Fong is the big pub area of Hong Kong, with about two square blocks of bar after bar. Most of the places just server booze, no food, so we ended up at the Hong Kong Brew Haus, something of a hybrid between a German bar and an American sports bar. It’s one of those places where they serve you peanuts in the shell to nosh on and you simply throw the peanut shells on the floor. The reason why I mention this is that these were the smallest peanuts in the shell I’ve ever had. Clearly these weren’t Georgia Peanuts. We had some burgers and brew and just relaxed for a couple of hours, chatting about the trip to Beijing.

Around 9:00 that night we made our way back to Parkview to meet Carrie at the karaoke bar they’ve got there. Usually on Saturday nights the place is packed with people singing karaoke, but this night the only karaoke being sung was in the private rooms. One of the private rooms had what looked like a rather intense game of poker going on, which I would have loved to get in on. So, no karaoke, but a nice time to just sit and relax with a drink in hand. Carrie’s friend Brenda joined us, but by 11:00, Sharon and I started to crash. Remember, we got up around 5:30 in the morning on Saturday. We said goodbye to everyone, and called it a night. I was actually quite glad to be sleeping on the Aero Bed again, instead of that hard hotel bed in Beijing.

That’s really the end of my story. Sunday we simply woke up early, packed, made our final trip to the ParkNShop grocery store next door and left for home. Nothing terribly exciting to report about our trip home, other than jet lag on the way home from Asia is far worse than going there.

The trip itself was an amazing one and I already miss Hong Kong. It’s such an easy town to get around in and there’s still much for me to explore there. I’d go back any day.

Beijing I’d like to go back to at some point, but only five or ten years from now. I’d really like to see how different that city is once they’ve finished with their improvements.

There are a number of things I miss from China already:

• I miss the excellent public transportation. It was nice not having to drive for a while.
• I miss Wrigley’s Extra Lemon-Pear gum. I bought a bunch of it on my way back at the ParkNShop grocery store, but I’ve not been able to find it here. It appears to be a Hong Kong only item. I know, Lemon-Pear doesn’t sound good, but it really is.
• I miss Bueno chocolate bars. Carrie introduced them to us. A chocolate bar with a light and fluffy crunch to it. I bought a whole bunch for my Dad as he’s a major chocoholic.
• I miss fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. Carrie raved about how good the grapefruit juice is in China compared to the States. She’s absolutely right. So much better, so much fresher.
• I miss spinach bagels. Haven’t found them yet in the States.
• I miss how nice the people were in Hong Kong. Los Angeles is a great city, but it’s not exactly the friendliest one in the world. In Hong Kong the service was pretty much spectacular everywhere we went and the people were always helpful.
• I miss the cheap stuffs! If I go back to Hong Kong– now that I know where some of the good shopping is and how to go about haggling– I’d totally buy more stuff there. Being able to plan ahead is key with the shopping in Hong Kong. We were always somewhat rushed when we shopped, but you really should take your time when searching for bargains.

I’m sure there’s much more, but that’s what popped into my head right now.

As I write this, it’s now almost two weeks that I’ve been back and I’ve just now finished this travel journal. In total it’s just 38 pages long in Times New Roman font at 12 pixels. That’s 22,528 words. 96,447 characters (no spaces). 1709 lines. That’s a lot of writing. Hopefully some of you enjoyed it. I’m afraid to go back to the early chapters, where I know I didn’t edit them very well.

Our Space Mountain picture. I look stoned. Sharon looks like she’s having fun (which she’s not– hates roller coasters). Jimmy looks like he’s breathing easy. The two behind him are having a jolly good time. And then there’s the dude sitting next to Jimmy, ducking behind me. What, is he expecting to get hit by gunfire or something? Why are you ducking?!?

And now I present Part 2 of my Friday in Beijing. This is the story of Jonah and his Chinese friend in Tiananmen Square. PLUS, more photos have been added to the gallery, including your humble tour guide in a photo with Chairman Mao. We better hope I never run for public office.

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We got back to the room around 3:00, which is precisely when my stomach started to get a little upset. I’ll spare you the details, but I paid for the Chinese Pancake for 24 hours. Just something to consider should you be interested in buying food from a vendor at the Great Wall.

Around 4:00 I took off for Tiananmen Square while Sharon took a nap. I went down to my Concierge and had him write out “Take me to Tiananmen Square” on a card, as well as “Take me to New World Courtyard” with the address of our hotel on the back. Before going to Beijing I was warned that the cabbies aren’t entirely helpful and often try to take Westerners for a ride, so I had to be cautious. I walked over to the cab stand and got a cab rather quickly. The ride took about 15 minutes, entirely due to traffic. I probably could have walked the distance in the same amount of time. The drive cost me a total of 14 Yuan once we arrived about a block south of the Square. I gave the guy a 20 (about $2.50) and made my way to the Square.

As I began to walk over there, a young Chinese gentleman walked up beside me and started talking to me in relatively good English. My first instinct was to check the location of my money and wallet, both of which were secure. Before going to Beijing I was told by one friend I should find someone in Tiananmen Square who knows English, pay him $40 American and have him show me around Beijing for the day. I had another friend tell me that was a very dodgy idea. So here I am, with some guy who won’t leave me alone, nor is he being rude, wondering what do I do? There were plenty of people around and he certainly wasn’t hostile, just super friendly. So I went with it.

We walked towards Tiananmen Square together, through the underground walkway that takes you under the major street that borders one side, and came out the other side to Tiananmen Square. Wow. This kinda belw me away, a bit. In Chinese history, this location is one of the most important. In 1949 Chariman Mao Zedong stood at the far end of the Square, on the patio of the Forbidden City and declared this the People’s Republic of China. In 1989 Chinese students held demonstrations, demanding greater democratic reforms. The Chinese, in response, ordered tanks and members of the Peoples Liberation Army into the square. After months of protests and gatherings, the PLA took arms up against their own people. It was the site of a horrible massacre.

As we walked Tiananmen Square together, my friend told me his name was Li Wei. He was an art student who hoped to study in Paris next summer as part of a student exchange program. He hoped one day to visit New York City. When I told him I was from Los Angeles, his response was, “Hollywoooooooood?” That’s right, exactly as you imagine it in your head. He wanted to know all about it, so I told him what I could.

As we walked towards the National Flag, he talked about Mao and how he stood on the balcony of the Forbidden City, right above where the now famous oil painting of the Chairman is hung, declaring this new China. He told me about the buildings around the Square, about how the National Museum of China that was to our right as we walked was going to be demolished shortly because it looked too communist. It seems the Chinese government is pretty much rebuilding Beijing from the ground up in preparation for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games. They don’t want people thinking Communist when they see images from the games, they want people thinking Chinese. So this massive, Communist looking building is being brought down and rebuilt in a more Chinese, modern style.

It was then that the city of Beijing started to make some sense to me. See, pretty much every third or fourth building in Beijing was either getting some sort of face lift, or was being rebuilt from the ground up. The Chinese are doing massive improvements to their city, hoping to make it more International in time for the Olympics.

As we walked around and he told me about the square and the buildings there, I noticed a number of people would stare at me as I walked by them. I asked Li why this was and he noted that a lot of these people are probably from the Western Provinces and Inland China, where white people don’t generally go. He said for many of these people it was likely the first time they’ve ever seen someone with white features in person. It was slightly unnerving, but not a real problem. It got somewhat comical when people would come up to Li asking him to ask me if they could take a picture with me. Suddenly I became a tourist attraction for the Chinese.

Li and I hung out for about an hour, just talking about China and America (btw, when I asked him about the student revolts in the square in 1989, he wouldn’t discuss it). I figured I should get back to Sharon as I told her I’d only be gone for half an hour or so, at which point Li asked if I’d come over to look at his art in the National Museum. I thought to myself, “OK, this could be cool, but be careful. If you end up walking down any alleys, fucking book!” We walked over to the museum, stopped in front of the Beijing Olympics countdown clock where numerous Chinese people were taking their pictures, then made our way up a flight of stairs and I found myself in a large room filled with Chinese style art. All this art was made by Li, his fellow students and his art teacher, apparently a famous professor named Songhair. I took in all the art and listened as Li explained what each piece meant. While we were there, another student did some Chinese calligraphy on a piece of rice paper, with the Chinese word for “Succesful” in big letters, and the words “2005 Beijing, Year of the Rooster” and “A Gift To Our American Friend Jonah” on the side. When I saw this I was quite blown away and knew Sharon wouldn’t forgive me had I not got her one as well, so I asked politely if they’d do one for her and they were happy to, this time using the word “Peace.”

The students all mentioned that, were I interested, I could buy their art, but that there was no pressure. No real hard sell, except for one female student who kept on telling me how much cheaper her art was than the rest (and you could see exactly why. Seriously, not a good selling point.). As Li told me, he wanted to talk to me not to get me to buy his art, but because he really wanted to talk with someone from America. I had a small amount of change still in my pocket, about 30 Yuan, and just gave it to him. I mean, he spent an hour and a half with me and had two beautiful bits of calligraphy made for my sister and I. I figured I owed him something. He said he’d give it as a donation to his school for their trip next year.

I left Li and the other students and made my way to find a Taxi. On the ride back to the hotel I noticed for the first time the police presence in the city. On almost every other block stood a cop in a very military style looking uniform, standing on top of a wooden crate, holding a machine gun. The Chinese are worried people looking at their Communist era buildings will think of Communism, when the cops on street corners with guns won’t do the same thing? Certainly intimidating.

I arrived back at the hotel, told Sharon of my adventure, then we got ready for dinner at Peking Duck in Beijing. This is a rather famous chain in Beijing, very popular with locals. Carrie & Jimmy tried it and suggested we do the same. We went to our Concierge, told him where we were going, so he wrote that down on a card as well as some additional info. He said if we showed it to the lady at the front desk, we’d be sat immediately. So, we hopped in another cab (which took a while as many of them waved us on, I’m guessing because we were white as they immediately picked up Chinese folk near us), who took us to the restaurant.

The Peking Duck we went to was huge. A massive, noisy restaurant with not too many Westerners in there (I noticed only one other Western couple while we were there). The staff was very helpful in advising us what we should choose for dinner– Peking Duck, of course! We ordered that, a couple of appetizers and some Coke Light and enjoyed our meal. The duck was, well, interesting. It was brought to our table whole, and they sliced that sucker up right in front of us. They started with the top most section of skin, pulling just the skin off for us to eat later. Then they started to carve the rest of the duck and laid it out nicely on a plate for us. They brought us mooshoo style wraps as well as plum sauce, shallots, some lettuce and other items to add to the mooshoo wraps. You take a little bit of each item, throw on some plum and spicey sauce, roll it up burrito style and enjoy. It was actually quite good, although I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing I’d eat regularly at a Chinese restaurant.

The skin, on the other hand, was supposed to be eaten alone. Simply dip it into the plum sauce and enjoy. Well, I did just that, but I can’t say I quite enjoyed it. Very fatty and soaking in grease. Not for me.

After dinner we took pictures with the famous Peking Duck sculpture, then found a cab to go back to our hotel. I showed the cabbie the card which said the name of the hotel and the address, at which point he barked something at me and we started moving. We passed by Tiananmen Square at night, which was all lit up, but soon I realized he wasn’t going the right way. Boy was I glad I had gone out earlier in the day because I had seen enough of the surrounding area to know he wasn’t taking us in the right direction. With me speaking no Mandarin and him speaking no English, it became a yelling match of “NO!” and hand signals to get him to take us directly back to our hotel, instead of the rather circuitous route he was taking. I’m not sure if he didn’t understand (hard to believe as all the info was on the card) or if he was trying to take us for a ride (what I tend to believe), but in total it ended up taking an extra 5, maybe 10 minutes to get back to the hotel at a total cost of $2.50 American. No biggie, but somewhat frustrating.

Before we headed back to the room (despite the Chinese Pancake starting to upset my stomach something fierce), Sharon and I decided to go check out the attached mall and grocery store again. I looked at a neat pair of shoes (the likes of which I’ve not seen in America), but the biggest Western equivalent size they had was an 8, and me being a 10 meant no go for me. Sharon checked out the shoe department for a while as well, then we walked around the rest of the mall which had all sorts of the kind of things you see in malls here, just with entirely different brand names, most of which I’d never heard of. We walked by a bustling Starbucks, then saw a second entrance into the massive grocery store down below and made our way down there.

We probably walked the aisles of the grocery story for half an hour or so, taking in all the unique items the likes of which you’ll never see in the states. We tended to spend a lot of time in the baked good and candy sections. I bought some candies, some Coke Light’s, a baked good or two, some packs of Wrigley’s cappuccino flavored gum and two bags of Tang, one Apple flavored and one Pineapple flavored. As those of you who know me are already away, I’m a big fan of Tang! I’ve never been able to shake that child hood fascination with the stuff, so when I saw these other flavors they had to be mine!

As we left the grocery store and made our way back to the hotel through the mall, I once again heard a Chinese version of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence,” this time sung by a Chinese singer and echoing throughout the halls of the mall. Either this is just one hugely popular song in China right now, or they’re really trying to get across the message that silence is a good idea in China.

Once we finished shopping it was back to our room to get ready for bed. We had a 9:00 AM flight back to Hong Kong on Saturday, which meant we had to meet our driver at 6:00 in the morning. It was going to be an early day.

Finally, the story of our trip to the Great Wall! Plus, photos from our visit to the Great Wall have been posted here.

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Friday morning Sharon and I woke up around 6:45 in the morning. I was afraid that sleeping on the ultra-hard bed in the hotel room would mean a sleepless night, but in fact I fell asleep immediately and didn’t wake up once through the night, which is somewhat unusual for me. Once we were dressed, we headed down stairs for the complimentary breakfast– a mix of Western and Chinese breakfast items, none of which were all that good.

We hired our car to pick us up at 8:00, so we made our way downstairs following breakfast, met up with the Concierge who showed us the way to our driver and car. Our driver was a young man, maybe in his mid-twenties, and we never actually learned his name. Odd considering we were basically handing responsibility over to a guy we knew nothing about, nor did we even know his name and he didn’t speak a word of English (outside of Hotel and Airport). Whatever, it’s all about the adventure really.

And an adventure it was. Sharon tried to get some rest during the drive, while I was wide awake the entire time. The only thing I wished I had asked before we left was how long the drive would take because it turned into a very odd and long drive. I had no idea it was going to be that long.

We started out hitting Beijing morning traffic on a number of their freeways, but soon there after we took streets almost the entire way. Driving through Beijing I was surprised by the sheer number of VW and Audi on the road there. Those two car brands own the road in Beijing. Other familiar name brands such as Jeep, Hyundai, Citroen, Toyota and Nissan were spied, but almost every other car was an Audi or VW and we passed numerous VW dealerships while driving through Beijing. They like their Farfegnugen. I also saw a number of Chinese brands I’d never heard of before and not a single one of them is really worth mentioning. Talk about a bland assortment of designs.

The drive itself took about two hours to get to the great wall. As we got outside the city the roads got smaller, eventually going from eight lane freeways to two lane roads, one lane for each direction. The drive was fast, very fast most of the time, so any looks at the country side I got were rather quick. I remember passing a place that had the English words “Car Wash” on a sign. It looked much more like some dude standing outside his garage with a hose and bucket, nothing like the giant car washing monstrosities we have in the States.

On the drive to the Great Wall, we passed numerous manufacturing plants, including a Whirlpool plant and an LG/Philips plant. Some of these plants were just giant warehouses in the middle of no where, while still others either had large community complexes adjacent to the main plant, or the community areas were in the process of being built. All I could think was, “Wow, that’s where all our shit is made.” Go ahead, look around at most anything sitting on your desk. I’m guessing 50% of the time you’ll discover it was made in China. (I just picked up my phone and sure enough, “Made in China” is stamped on the bottom of it.)

At one point our drive took a rather odd turn. Sharon was sleeping, or actually she was trying to sleep, and I was just sitting there wondering if we’d ever show up at the Great Wall. We were driving down this mostly open road when suddenly we came to a gate, which closed off the street. Our driver stopped and muttered something in Chinese. He looked back at me and all I could do was shrug. I got the message– he wasn’t sure what to do right at that point. Were we lost? No, I didn’t think so, but clearly the route he wanted to take was now blocked off.

He backed up a bit, drove back down the road, then turned around and made his way back to the gated thing. He looked around for a bit, at which point a Black Audi A6 came up behind us, then passed us on the right, going off road and around the gate, then back onto the road on the other side. Our driver’s solution? Just follow the guy! Turned out to be a pretty good one and a safe bet as most Audi A6s appear to be hired cars in China, so we were probably following a driver who knew what he was doing.

Except then we started to drive down this dirt road, only to find all those cars that were in front of us backing up towards us. Once again, our driver muttered something in Chinese, then backed up and continued to follow the Black Audi down another dirt road. It was super bumpy and, in fact, we were driving through some dude’s farm! It was at this point flashes of the following scenario jumped through my head: “Fuck me! The driver is going to stop this car in the middle of this field, get out and yell shit at us in Chinese, drag our asses out of the car, march us into the middle of this field and put bullets in our heads. I just know it!” Shortly after those thoughts entered my head, Sharon arose from her slumber, looked around and saw we were driving down the middle of some sort of farm field, following one other car and asked me, “Uhhhh, are we going the right way?” I wanted to scream back, “How the fuck should I know? I’m freaking out over here!” I wasn’t actually freaking out, but the moment Sharon asked the question I just shrugged and she looked away, realizing I had as little an idea as she did.

We finally got off the dirt road and turned onto nicely paved roads for the rest of our journey. Each time I thought we were getting close, another 10 minutes would pass before I thought the same thing again. It took us another half hour or so to get there, but arrive we finally did.

Sharon and I decided on visiting the Mutianyu portion of the Great Wall. You have about six or seven choices when visiting the Great Wall. Most visitors go to Badaling, which is the most heavily restored and most heavily visited portion of the Great Wall. Carrie & Jimmy suggested Mutianyu and the Living Planet guide I borrowed from a friend mentioned that Mutianyu was less heavily trafficked by tourists and also afforded the best views compared to the other sections of the wall.

When we arrived, our driver quickly shepherded us over to the ticket booth. The parking for this section of the Great Wall is located at the bottom of a very high mountain. Our choices were to either take the steps all the way up, which would have taken hours, or you could take a ski lift to the top and toboggan down, or take a gondola to the top. Not sure if we were up for the toboggan run down the mountain, we opted to take the gondola to the top. Our driver shoved his way to the front of the line, jumping in front of a line of about 20 people, yelled something at the ticket lady, then yelled at me for money, got our tickets for us and moments later we were off to catch our gondola.

On our walk up, we got our first taste of what the market at the Great Wall was like. Suddenly your hit on all sides by merchants yelling, “You buy!” or “You take my card, I remember you on way back” or stuff like that. Jimmy had warned us not to take any cards, nor to give anyone our names, because they would remember on the way back and would harass you. Jimmy opted to give about 20 different names, so on his way down he was constantly being yelled at with different names. “Fred! George! Abraham!” Sharon and I sprinted, as fast we could, up the mountain to the gondola lift, avoiding all the merchants. Well, except one. One was selling cold drinks, so I stopped, asked how much for a Tsing Tao beer. She told me 50 Yuan, about 6 bucks. Screw that noise. I walked away, she yelled, “How much you pay?” I said “8 Yuan!” “Nooooo, loooooosa money,” she yelled back in a most exaggerated fashion. She yelled, “10 Yuan,” at which point I bought my beer, put it in my back pack, and continued up the mountain to the gondola lift, passing a guy wearing an ancient Chinese suit of armor who wanted us to take our picture with him, as well as a woman who owned a camel, who once again wanted us to take our picture with it. Forget it, we’re here for the Great Wall, dammit!

The gondola ride up the mountain was loads of fun and in fact, the gondola we took had stickers on it that said British Prime Minister John Major took this gondola up the mountain in 1991. Whopeefucking doooo! I wanted to be in the one Bill Clinton took, dammit! Oh well, I guess we’ll settle for the gondola of a PM I know basically nothing about.

As we rode up the mountain, Sharon and I were given our first views of the Great Wall and we were both blown away. It’s one of those things you’ve seen countless times on television and film. Once you get there and you actually get to experience the Great Wall itself, it’s a whole different feeling. Our excitement grew as we made our way up the mountain.

The trip lasted maybe 5 minutes total. We got off the gondola, then made our way up to the Wall itself. There’s a bit of a patio area, then a very small set of stairs and a small hole in the wall that you walk through to get to the actual Wall. Once we were there, we began walking.

While I can’t speak to the style of the other sections of the wall, this one is very high up and very steep. As we landed on the Wall itself, we moved to our left and made our way to what is the highest and steepest section of Mutianyu. I believe we had seven or eight watchtowers to see, out of a total of 22 on this section of the Wall. The walk went from being relatively easy to very, very hard at times. We’d usually stop at each Watchtower to take in the view and snap some photos. Sharon and I were both really excited to be there. Overwhelmed wouldn’t be the right word, but incredibly excited would probably do it. We continued to hike around, take pictures and taking in the view of the Chinese country side.

Sharon and I stood there to take in the Wall itself, as well as the scenery. We were both kind of awestruck by the entire experience. I’d say dumb shit like, “This is awesome,” while Sharon remained quiet for a bit. Then suddenly she just let out with, “Totally wow.” That’s really the perfect way to describe being on the Great Wall– Totally Wow. That became our catch-phrase for the remainder of the trip.

While there were certainly other tourists at Mutianyu, it really wasn’t that crowded and not as crowded as I’m told Badaling gets. In fact, at points it felt like Sharon and I were the only ones on the Great Wall, a rather cool feeling. At some point while I was up on one of the watch towers, I realized that this was the most disconnected to the outside world I’ve been probably since the first time I logged onto the Internet in 1997. I had no way to contact anyone and no way to be contacted (my cell phone got no coverage at the Great Wall). Kinda liked that!

The wall itself is an impressive structure, but I’m finding it a bit hard to describe simply because, well, it’s a wall. A wall with very large bricks, some of which have been clearly replaced, while other portions look very old and authentic. It’s high, about 10-15 yards from the ground, and about 10 yards wide, getting slightly wider at each of the watchtowers. It’s not terribly ornate and the watchtowers themselves are somewhat beat up, but they still hold an incredible charm. We were allowed to walk up to the top of the first one, where we sat for a bit and took in the view.

Sharon and I continued to walk along the Great Wall. We passed by some group that was filming some music video with pairs of shoes up there. Some sort of stop motion photography. As we walked along, we’d pass numerous white people who always said hi. It was like they were saying, “Oh thank God, someone who might speak English!”

We were also passed by a group of, I believe, Japanese businessmen, six of them, all wearing slacks and polo style shirts, running the Wall towards the steepest portion at the far end. And they were yelling the entire time, at each other. Best I can guess is they were antagonizing or encouraging each other to run as much of the Wall they could and as fast as they could. They’d stop at each watchtower to wait for their friends, yelling at them the entire time. It was actually quite hilarious. At one point a group of four or five men took off towards the next watchtower, while some of them stayed behind. They got to the next watchtower and started yelling back at the rest of the group to join them, and they finally did. These guys were having so much fun and Sharon and I decided to join in on the fun.

Sharon was feeling pretty tired and run down at this point, so she said I should keep going and she’d wait there for me. So off I went, while she yelled at me from behind. I’d yell back and wave and she’d do the same. Wow, maybe those Japanese guys had something! It was strangely fun, more fun than it should have been.

As I continued walking the Wall, it got steeper and steeper, until I reached the bottom of the great climb. Now, I had already been away from Sharon for about half an hour and I wasn’t feeling 100% myself. I considered making the climb, but decided not to. It would probably have taken me another half hour to make the climb, then 10 minutes of recovery, followed by another hour just to make it back to Sharon. I really wanted to go to Tiananmen Square later in the day and felt spending more time at the Wall than was needed wasn’t a good idea. So I turned back.

I met back up with Sharon and we took the Gondola ride down, which afforded us more great views of the Wall. As we arrived at the base of the mountain, we were descended upon by loads of merchants once again. Carrie & Jimmy warned us that these people would be terribly aggressive, but I had no idea they’d be thus nuts!

As we approached the first vendor, I saw something I had to buy. My friend and CBR Columnist Matt Fraction requested I buy him one of those furry, Chinese military hats while I was in China. I’d not seen one anywhere in Hong Kong and figured I wouldn’t be able to fulfill his request. Now the very first vendor I saw had one and I knew I had to buy it. I asked the price and she said, “480!” That’s $59.18 cents, young man. I think not. After going back and forth with her, I finally got her down to 50 Yuan, or $6.16. Yes, she came down $53 and I figured I got myself the Chinese price, not the American price, and walked away rather happy.

Two stalls down I saw the exact same hat and the woman offered to sell it to me for 20 Yuan, or $2.46 American.

Dammit!

It was at that point I realized my response for most every item I was interested in had to be 10 Yuan, then I’d let them try to haggle me higher. I got “ripped” and it wasn’t about to happen again.

Sharon and I spent about half an hour shopping at the base of the Wall and we quickly discovered we should have done all of our gift shopping at the Wall. Once you got into the mode of haggling with these shopkeepers– most of whom were women– you could get some incredible deals. In fact, I ended up getting another one of those fuzzy Chinese hats for only 12 Yuan, or $1.47. No, I didn’t need it, but I figured I needed to offset the cost of the first one somehow. Or at least feel like I got one at a bargain.

Like I said, the shop keepers at the Great Wall are terribly, terribly aggressive. For those of you in the SoCal area who’ve gone to Tijuana, it’s like that, but far more aggressive. Most of them are selling the exact same merchandise, so they’re all competing with each other in a rather nasty way. If you ask about something and they tell you how much it is and you walk away, they usually try to block your path by stepping directly in front of you. If you push them aside, they’ll often grab your arm or your shit, to get you to come back. And they don’t stop hounding you until you’re about two or three stalls away.

In the Living Planet travel book they point out how you just can’t be rude. You have to make sure your actions don’t make them loose face as that’s important. Keeping that in mind, I haggled as nicely as I could, never saying anything rude. You’d constantly hear chants of, “You buy” or “Good price, you buy.” Once you gave them a counter offer they’d invariably respond with, “Nooooo, loooosa monayyyyy” very dramatically.

My favorite had to be the merchants who’d say, “Ohhh, I remember you. You say you buy. Come look.” Now, keep in mind we came down the mountain a different way than we had gone up, so there’s no way these chicks could remember me. “I’ve never seen you before!” “Oh, yes you have. You took my card. You say you buy when come back. You buy!” the lady would respond forcefully.

Probably the most classic moment of our shopping came when Sharon wanted to buy three T-Shirts from this one vendor, towards the bottom of the shopping area. Sharon asked how much and was told 3 Tee’s for 480 Yuan, once again about $58.17. No way were we going to pay the “American Price,” so we left the stall. She called Sharon back with word of lower prices. Sharon and her went back and forth a bit, at which point I walked in and found a t-shirt I liked. I asked the lady how much for four t-shirts and she said something like 4 for 400 or so. I responded with, “4 for 100!” She responded with “Nooooooo, looooosa money” and shooed me away. I walked away, and she came running back with a counter offer. I’d say no, would respond with what became my mantra “4 for 100!” She’d write down new figures on a piece of paper, 4 for 300 Yuan, 4 for 200 Yuan, etc … and then she’d hand me her pen and I’d right down “4 for 100!” At this point a small crowd formed around the two of us, watching to see how this would all go down.

About five minutes after starting with this woman, I walked away because she wasn’t coming down below 140 Yuan. She grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me back. “130!” Nope. “120!” Nope. I knew I had her. “110!!!” Nope. Finally, she relented and we got the four t-shirts for 100, although as we paid her she still asked for more money. Nope, not going to do it. We paid abut $3 per t-shirt.

I bought a bunch of presents for people, some t-shirts, one piece of tapestry I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with yet, a beautifully painted wooden mask (about $2) and various other crap. Loads of fun.

A couple of notes about shopping at the Great Wall. If you buy a tee-shirt, get it two sizes too big. An XL is like a small Large. If you’re normally an XL, get a XXXL and even then that will be a bit small on you. Also, never buy from the first stall. There are hundreds of vendors there and someone will definitely make you a deal down the road. Those first vendors work hard and aggressively, but just ignore them and keep walking.

Sharon and I made our way back to the car, at which point we found our driver waiting for us near the entrance. As we walked down we passed more vendors, all selling the same stuff. Sharon heard one call out, “T-shirts for $1 American!” DAMMIT! Ripped off again.

The stalls at the bottom of the mountain had a wider assortment of product. Not just Chinese stuff and what not, but also food, vegetables, fruit, etc. One woman was screaming at me, “Come, have Chinese Pancake!” My interest was piqued, so I went to buy one. Sharon warned me against it, saying I’d get sick, but I have a pretty tough constitution and figured I’d try it.

The Chinese Pancake was cooked on a crepe maker. The woman poured the crepe mix onto the crepe pan, spread it around and made a thin crepe. On top of this she cracked a raw, brown egg, then turned the thing over so the egg would cook. She said, “Plum sauce” while holding up a small cup of sauce with a brush and I said sure. She then said, “Spicy,” holding up another small cup of sauce with a brush and I said a little, bringing my thumb and forefinger together. She spread both sauces on the crepe, then sprinkled green onions on top, and cracked some sort of deep fried dough she’d cooked earlier in the day on top of it. She folded the whole thing up, wrapped it in a paper towel and handed it to me as I handed her 8 Yuan, about $1.

It was delicious. The sauce was incredibly tasty (I could have gone hotter) and the dough was really quite delicious. Half way through eating it I realized Sharon was probably right and I shouldn’t eat all of it. So, I threw the rest away, hopped in the car and back to Beijing we went.

The drive home was completely uneventful. It was freeway driving the entire way, hitting traffic as we passed by the Airport. It took about two hours, mostly because of the traffic. I later found out when talking with the concierge that the driver took an alternate route to get to the wall because the traffic on the Beijing and outlying area freeways in the morning is a real nightmare. We left the wall around 1:00, so afternoon rush hour hadn’t begun yet.

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More tomorrow, with the story of my visit to Tiananmen Square!

I’ve finally finished writing up my journal of my China visit, so the updates will be coming a bit quicker from this point forward. What follows is the journal for Thursday, August 25th in Hong Kong and Bejing, mostly a travel day. Friday was our visit to the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square, which is where the real fun happens. There aren’t any pictures from Thursday, so when I post my Friday wrap, I’ll include new pictures in the gallery. Enjoy!

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Thursday morning Sharon and I got packed and prepared for our trip to Beijing. We had a mid-afternoon flight to make, so we left Parkview around 11:30 or so and made our way to Airport Express. AE is absolutely one of the greatest things ever made for travelers and other cities really should follow suit. AE is located near the Central Station in Hong Kong. It’s a station for the train that takes you from Hong Kong Island to Hong Kong International Airport, but it offers one major convenience– check in! You can check in for your flight directly at Airport Express and skip check in once you get to the airport. You can even check your bags there! We checked in for our flight on Southern China Airlines quickly and easily. Once we were done it was simply hop on the train, arrive at the airport and find our gate. Super simple and easy. If Los Angeles had something like this life would be so great. Imagine the Flyaway in Van Nuys having a check-in for your flight and bags! Oh that would be awesome, but it would never happen.

We arrived a bit early for our flight, so Sharon and I stopped at some tea lounge and had a little lunch. Sharon had some udon soup to help soothe her aching throat (her cold came on pretty strong on Thursday) while I enjoyed my dim sum favorite, paper noodles (not nearly as good as at the dim sum place the other day).

The flight was mostly uneventful. It was the first flight I’ve been on in seven years that wasn’t completely sold out, so Sharon went and found a row to lie down in while I got a chance to pull out the computer and catch up on some e-mail. The in-flight movie was “Ocean’s Twelve,” which surprised me a bit as I was under the impression it would be a Chinese film. No matter, I’ve already seen the movie and didn’t need to see it again.

Lunch was OK and a little different than usual. It consisted of a bread roll, dried apple chips, a KitKat bar (in Chinese), a salad of pickled vegetables and a slice of salmon, some melon and greasy beef noodles. Frankly the apple chips were the best part.

Oh, one thing I should note about the flight that I thought was kinda odd. When we boarded the plane and when we left it, quietly there was music playing the background, I’m guessing to soothe travelers nerves and put them in a good mood for the flight. It wasn’t until we landed that I noticed what the song was– an instrumental only version of the Simon & Garfunkel song “The Sounds of Silence.” Maybe this was Beijing’s way of telling foreign travelers to keep their Western ideas to themselves?

We arrived in Beijing and met up with our driver there. We had been told to arrange for a driver ahead of time as cabbies in Beijing can’t always be trusted. The drive in the Black Audi A6 with tinted windows all around took about an hour and a half, mostly due to pretty awful traffic. We’d soon discover that as wild as the cab rides are in Hong Kong, the driving in Beijing bordered on damned frightening! Lanes in the roads are only a suggestion and coupled with the thousands and thousands of people walking or on bikes, even on some of the highways, it made for an interesting drive. Our driver changed lanes constantly trying to get through the traffic, driving on both shoulders numerous times. There simply seem to be no rules to the road in Beijing, other than watching the street lights (bicycles have their own lights as well).

Beijing is a sprawl of a city, much like Los Angeles, and it’s clear it’s undergoing a massive change. In 2008, Beijing will play host to the Olympics and the Chinese are busily preparing for the event. Massive construction is taking place all over Beijing, which really isn’t that modern or western a city as I’m used to. It’s a bit dirty or messy, reminding me a bit of cities I’ve visited in Mexico. There’s also a constant haze over the city, impairing visibility rather heavily at times. I’m not sure if it’s smog or something else, but it certainly didn’t allow for great views of Beijing. And whereas Hong Kong is incredibly modern and clean with huge skyscrapers, what we saw of Beijing was quite the opposite.

We arrived at our hotel rather tired and in a bit of culture shock. In Hong Kong most people speak at least a little English, but not so in Beijing. The staff at the hotel were pretty helpful, especially the concierge.

We checked in and the bellman took us to our room, which already had someone’s bags in there. The bellman called down to the front desk and made arrangements for another room. He told us it would be on the 15th floor, which was a much better room. Well, when we finally got to our room it looked no different than the one we saw on the 8th floor. Whatever, we were there and looking forward to settling in.

Once we had everything settled with the room, it was back downstairs to find an ATM, then make arrangements for a driver to take us to the Great Wall the next day. Everything I had read and everything Carrie & Jimmy told us about the Great Wall was that hiring a driver versus taking a tour bus was the only way to go. See, most of the tour busses end up dropping you off at some bullshit shopping mall on the way there, where you get to spend two hours of your time shopping for crap you can by at the Great Wall anyway. Plus, our time was short on Friday and I wanted to try to at least fit in a visit to Tiananmen Square as well, so having a private driver was clearly the way to go. The drive to the section of the Great Wall we were going to was about 2 hours each way, the equivalent of a drive from Los Angeles to San Diego, and it cost us about $100 American. If I were to hire a driver for the day to take me from LA to SD and back, it would probably cost me around $400. More on the drive, which was an adventure itself, in the next write-up.

Sharon was now in full-blown cold mode and doing fairly poorly. She was quickly running out of sore throat lozenges and could really use some cough medicine, so we asked our concierge where we could find some medicine. He instead opted to show us the way to the grocery store in the attached mall next door. We made our way down to the grocery store, which was located at the bottom of the mall. Our concierge walked so quickly through the mall, and there was so much too look at and see, neither of us was paying enough attention to remember how to get back to the hotel. Oh well, one thing at a time.

We got to the grocery store and the concierge found a pharmacist, or what I’m lead to believe was a pharmacist as it was simply a woman in a white lab coat. Our concierge tried to relay my sister’s symptoms to the pharmacist, his own grasp of the English Language not all that great. The pharmacist, who spoke no English, handed Sharon a small white box all in Chinese except for the name. My sister took one look at it and knew she wasn’t interested in whatever it was. I can’t say I blame her, either. We tried to communicate with the “pharmacist” to find out what exactly the pills were, but the lines of communication were definitely down.

My sister decided to pass on the mystery meds and as we walked around the stored we discovered a bottle of Robitussin with the only other English on the bottle reading “For Cold & Cough Symptoms.” Perfect! Then we found a package of Halls cough drops. Perfectomundo! Sharon was now pleased with her purchase.

While she bought her meds, I went and picked up some bottles of water, Coke Light and some Wrigley’s Cappucino flavored gum. That’s literally all it said on the label. For some reason this trip I’ve been fascinated by gum (I purchased a bunch of Extra Lemon-Pear flavored gum while in Hong Kong and despite the fact it sounds disgusting, it was fantastic!) How much did two 20 oz. bottles of water, two 20 oz. bottles of Coke Light and one package of three gum packs cost me? 9.90 Yuan, or the equivalent of $1.22 American. It would cost you $1.35 at your local 7-11 for just one bottle of Diet Coke. To say things in Beijing were cheap would be an understatement.

After the grocery store we desperately needed some food as we were both starved. After some delay, we found our way back to our hotel and opted to go to the hotel’s Chinese restaurant as it was now 8:00 and we weren’t feeling very adventurous. The Hue Wai Restaurant was surprisingly good and our meal would have been very cheap had we not ordered bottled water, Evian, which cost us $4.50 a piece, which was about $2 more than each of the dishes we ordered. Odd how bottled water cost that much more than actual food, but what can ya do? They don’t recommend you drink the water in Beijing, so we didn’t.

After dinner it was back to the room. BTW, did I mention that in order to get power in your room you must insert your door key in a little slot next to the door as you enter? Kinda odd, but I guess it does indeed conserve power.

Sharon made a bee-line for the bed, while I stayed up a while to get some work done and to do some research about Beijing money. At dinner I found myself slightly confused because I thought I had handed the waiter close to exact change, but apparently I hadn’t. I don’t recall what the bill was, but let’s say it was 102 Yuan. I handed him the bills, at which point he snapped a five note out of my hand and returned the two single notes, then returned with three other single notes. What the hell? It turns out that in China, their equivalent of the American cent, the jiao, is partly issued in paper money as well as coin. You can see what I mean on this page. In stead of handing him 102 yuan, I was actually handing him 100.20 yuan.

I did some more research about Beijing and was introduced to the Chinese censoring system for the first time. I soon discovered there was no way to get to the American version of Yahoo! News or CNN. I could get to Google News, but when I logged into my home computer from Beijing and pulled up Google News, it came up with different stories. It appears that Google caters their English news in China the way the Chinese would like them to. You also couldn’t pull up The Internet Movie Database in Beijing. I’m guessing too many Western movies for their taste (my sister and I had a question about some movie that came up during dinner). This was also the first time my mail server stopped responding to me.

Shit. My mail server is down. Time to send an urgent e-mail off to Matt to fix it.

Turns out it wasn’t. About five minutes after checking my mail for the first time, suddenly that one server out of my seven located in Los Angeles wouldn’t respond. I tried Web mail and even that wouldn’t respond. But, when I logged in via my home computer, I could pull it up just fine. Oh well, so I can’t check my e-mail easily in Beijing.

Except ten minutes later it was available again. Every time I checked my mail while in Beijing, the same thing would happen. Best I can tell something would set off an automatic censor, then some ten minutes later either a human being or some computer algorithm figured out it was a friendly server to the Chinese and would let me back in.

Once I finished playing online, it was time to catch some much needed sleep. The bed in the hotel was infinitely hard. Almost as hard as lying on the ground, with just a tad bit of cushion. I longed for the comfort of my Aero Bed back in Hong Kong. But I was so tired it wasn’t an issue and I was asleep minutes later with dreams of the Great Wall filling my head.

Wow, that was so incredibly gay!

Didn’t really take any photos on Tuesday in Hong Kong as it was mostly a work day for me, so we skip ahead to Wednesday’s photos, which have now been posted to the gallery. Some cool stuff here including shots of the escalators in the Midlevels as well as the Temple Street Night Market and Stanley.

I’ve posted almost 300 pictures so far and have another 100 or so to go.