...in my opinion is undoubtedly the Great Wall of China. After I wikipediaed it, I was somewhat less impressed. I had thought the Great Wall was very continuous and in large part still intact from its original construction. Neither of those are true; there are many areas of the wall which are eroded and the sites that I would venture to from Beijing have all been reconstructed. It also cannot be seen from the Moon. Nonetheless, it is an impressive structure. While at Mutianyu, the section of the wall we went to, I could see no end to the Wall. It slopes up and down the mountainside, an impressive engineering feat that often places the Wall at what a math major would term the local maximums of the surroundings. The whole construction of such a gigantic structure and its manning, is very hard for me to comprehend and I had fun imaging Ancient Chinese soldiers in armor patrolling the place. And by imagining I mean thinking back to Mulan.
I went with my friend John, a 27 year old grad student that I had met at the bar Lush. A bit strange circumstances but its worked out well. There we met up with Lisa and her CIEE peeps, who were all a tad surprised that I had managed to find them on the Wall, especially those who had seen me the previous night at KTV. All in all, it was a little surreal, running into friends on a World Heritage site. A note on the KTV... I really did enjoy my first Karaoke experience but perhaps I did not need that many beers to get into the singing - I definitely felt it the next day at the Wall. Anyways my favorite part of the Great Wall was climbing off it and pretending I was a Mongolian trying to scale it. See my Facebook picture. Also, the Wall is quite a workout. Oh my goodness. First of all walking up the mountain to even get to the Wall had me gasping - more on that in a minute - and then the Wall itself was no slouch. I already mentioned how it snakes through the mountain peaks. Well at the end of the Mutianyu section, there is a lengthy series of uphill walking, followed by a steep 60 degree staircase. Oh and the weather was the warmest it had been since I've been here, probably about 92 degrees. That staircase conquered a fat black guy who happened to be the manager for Run DMC (who had played a concert at the Hard Rock in Beijing) and had to give up and go back down. Well I made it up, but it was certainly pretty damn hard. In terms of physical exhaustion, I'll put it somewhere below full field suicides after Ultimate practices where Dave is mad or the hardest RL varsity wrestling practices, but not that far below. It was a hike and a half. Then the way down those stairs was quite scary and I hearkened back to the time my mom had to slink down Chichen Itza, matching each step of her foot with one of her hand. We did manage to make it back and I quite thoroughly sweated out my hangover. Anyways I thoroughly enjoyed this trip to the Great Wall - I went there when I was 10 but of course I got so much more out of this one, not the least is about 50 photos - and really urge anyone reading this to either visit the Wall or at least Google image search it. Here's me trying to scale the wall:
Quite notes from this weekend: Craig, one of Lisa's friends, was wearing a Mamabird Ultimate t-shirt. Turns out he's an A team Frisbee player from Colorado, one of the best programs in the country. Um, how did no one tell me this? We talked about it for a half hour on the Wall. I was stunned cause he's this small shy half-asian kid, probably about 5'8 145 and is running out there with Jolian Doyle. I'll go ahead and say I think he's better than me at Ultimate. Also, I decided to do cardio for the first real time on the treadmill today...yeah I hope no one from my team is reading this. I couldn't even deal with 13 kilometers/hour and didn't run a mile, I honestly don't know what happened. While my legs are still exhausted from the wall, it is clear that 3 weeks of relatively no exercise combined with the Beijing air has shot my cardiovascular. The thing is though, I look fine, still skinny and probably as strong as I've ever been. But this conditioning thing is going to be a huge problem. Also, I've been hanging out with Lisa & co, Crystal and Kate a lot, but all individually as in they have yet to hang out together. Gotta get on that. Lastly, I've really gotta mellow down a bit - I've been living like a rock star in Beijing, and going out almost every night. I need to you know, stay in more, do some reading, work on my movie and maybe make this blog read less like shit. So on that note, take care.
No comments:
Post a Comment