Day 204: Finally — The Great Wall!! High Speed Train to Xi’An

Because we are leaving for Xi’An today, we had to get up super early if we wanted to cram in the Great Wall, which of course we did.

So guide Nancy picked us up at 6 am. 

Felt much better in the morning, but still super weak from no food.

We rolled our bags out of the Hutong and onto the main road where our driver took us the hour and a half to the Mutianyu part of the Wall.

From Beijing I guess there are three places to see the wall. One’s about 20-minutes away and very crowded/touristy. One’s about 4 hours away and is mostly unrestored/very craggy. Where we went was the Goldilocks middle — still far, but nicely restored and not as crowded.

In fact, much of the pathways and entrance were built for Melania Trump’s 2017 visit (none of us remembered that she’d gone). 

The Wall opens at 7:30 am, and we were there for it. 

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Can’t imagine doing it any other way — already at this hour it was 80-something degrees and super humid. 

We took a gondola high up through the mist/smog to the #14 watchtower.

It was so quiet and there was no one else there. Just us and the crickets.

As magical as imagined — very impressive. 

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We walked along the rolling wall for about two miles — most of it downhill, thank god, because it’s super steep. 

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Three different families stopped us to take pictures of us. Nancy explained they were Chinese tourists from rural provinces who’ve never seen white people in real life before.

James and Willa loved the attention and posed with full-blown peace signs and everything.

By the time we reached the #6 watchtower, our group — one grandma, two small kids and two just-getting-over-a-stomach-flu-haven’t-eaten-anything-in-36-hours grownups were ready to wrap. And that was at 9:30 am! I cannot imagine doing that walk in the heat that was descending.

Getting down the mountain was fun. Lila rode with Nancy in a chair lift — she said it was spectacularly beautiful — and we rode down on… a toboggan. I know – I couldn’t picture it either until we showed up, but yeah, there it was, this silver half-pipe slide that wove through the lush forest all the way down to the entrance to the park. Riders sit on little black plastic sleds with wheels and a brake stick.

James rode with Teddy and I rode with Willa and we went flying down. So much fun! Obviously the kids thought it was awesome. Great to end on a high note.

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We got back in the AC’d van (heaven) and dozed on the ride to one of Beijing’s super busy train stations, ready to catch a bullet train to Xi’An.

Wow. This train station scene was intense. Picture Penn Station on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, except 10 times bigger and more packed, and sweltering hot with no AC and few English signs. 

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We were grateful that we had Nancy with us to help navigate and that we’d booked business class seats with access to the AC’d lounge. There was vigorous snorer next to us in the lounge, but we were more impressed than annoyed.

When we finally boarded the train and saw the digs, the kids were beyond excited. We’ve boarded 53 flights this year — and therefore walked past “the fancy seats” (aka business class) 53 times, each time with the kids going, why can’t we sit in the faaaaaaaancy seats??

James actually said, “This is my fantasy!!” They immediately set to work flattening the beds and getting comfortable. 

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This train ride is about 850 miles — about the distance from DC to Vero, FL — and it takes just 4 hours. Crazy.

The ride was lovely and peaceful. Couldn’t help but be astonished at the non-stop stream of residential high-rises out our window the entire route. Middle of nowhere and there were clusters of 5, 10, 15 identical brand-new 40-story apartment towers every second of the way. There are just So. Many. People. Here.

We were greeted at Xi’An’s new and gleaming and enormous train station by a porter and guide, this time named Helen. After our early wake up, heavy travel and sweltering weather — we were kind of a mess. The kids were whiney and we were all hungry and wiped — and had an hour drive to the hotel.

This city! It’s 9 million people — bigger than NYC — and not even in the top 5 major Chineses cities. All very modern and clean. Slightly greener than Beijing, but still with gray smoggy air.

Our hotel here is nicer than Beijing, and as we’ve learned, we appreciate a nice hotel so much more when you came from something less spiffy. 

We got to bed later than we’d hoped — Willa’s sleeping with Lobsy in her room and James is on a cot in our room.

Another early wakeup and grind day tomorrow.

At midnight I woke up and threw up my dinner — NOT better from the stomach bug. UGGGGH.

MISC:

Nancy explained to us that sugary sweets and desserts aren’t really a thing here in China once you grow up. In their culture, sweets are for kids. 

She also mentioned that saying “I love you” and showing physical affection within families and married couples are not common — said she’s always surprised to see Americans on her tours saying/doing this.

She described the intensity of pressure of school kids here. If you don’t get into a good school, you won’t get a good job — so every parent and every child is miserable with school work and extra curriculars six days a week, 6 am to 10 pm. She can hear the 10-year-old next door crying and fighting with his parents every night about doing his homework.

Nancy said Beijingers say: “When you’re rich you can buy everything — but you can’t buy blue sky.” The smog is so bleak that more school children now draw their sky gray instead of blue, a study showed (source: Nancy).

I love the way a Chinese accent in English sounds when saying words like Christmas and breakfast. Comes out Chris-merce and brek-ferce. 

Finally, can we just talk about how annoying public insert-coin binoculars are? You know the kind on a pole at the top of a hill or peak? One of our great pet peeves this year, having been to so many touristy spots with great views. The kids beg to try them every time we walk by one. 1) They require random combinations of foreign coins we probably don’t have 2) too tall for small people to manage on their own so we have to pick them up high 3) kids can’t actually really use binoculars that well anyway so they’re confused about what they’re looking at (while our shaky arms are about to give out they’re like, “I don’t see anything!”) 4) most of the time they don’t work at all. And our kids whine and beg to do it every time we walk by one. I HAAAAATE THEM.