Beijing is a staggering city – home to 18 million people. It lacks the geographical limitations of a New York or the zoning restrictions of London – thus it expands endlessly out into five rings and beyond, bubbling and yawning in concentric circles of urban sprawl. The cityscape is alien even to a Native New yorker. The skyscrapers are wide, square, unbelievably massive. They loomed like Ayer's rock overhead, their massive girth promoting an illusion of squatness, seeming more like mountains than the workhouses of men.
Kyle and I were doing the modern tourist thing. We bartered for hours in the Silk market, an anarchocapitalist heaven where there are no prices and no restrictions, where a T-shirt may be priced at $120 and sold for $3 and a grudging scowl, and the imminent threat of physical violence presages every hard fought purchase. After this battleground of Maoist Materialism, we dutifully marched through Tienneman square – an environ best described as DC with elephantiasis, white marble and sprawling government complexes which dwarfed our hallowed American halls in their celebrated alabaster grandeur.
There were no tanks awaiting us but plenty of souvenirs. We ventured to the Temple of Heaven, stood on the altar stones where the godlike emperors rendered sacrifice for the coming harvest, temples of purification and of ablution, worlds within worlds, architecture symbolic of the world to come.
In a strangely Orwellian portmanteaux we watched a strange game of bumper cars by the Forbidden city. All the cars bore lady liberty, clad in the stars and stripes and ready to rumble. As we watched America endlessly collide with itself from within its Chinese prison (no doubt someone in city planning is still chuckling at the oversight) the slowly light waned. Rote tourism accomplished, it was time for us to investigate the night life.
Beijing thrives with expat bars, but unlike Xian there is very little cross cultural mixing. We danced with the diaspora, the female expats who shared our transnational displacement, and made our way to the glimmering lake of Ho Hai. There we stare at the lake like some vast confabulated Shangri-la and passed innumerable neon lanterns glinting off the twilit waters, inviting the patrons from their hookahs and coffeehouses, towards the promise of excitement and adventure, and the ubiquitous happy ending off the cobbled side streets. Yet still through all of this we were surrounded by tourists, travelers, people seeking destinations, output, slices of cultural currency to display on their dais, proof that they had been somewhere and seen something. There were people everywhere, tourists by the boatloads, seeking fulfillment in a million external ways. There was little room, however, for the self, and it felt a vast Epcot of the soul – a glorious world of tomorrow, well constructed in its , safe and small and redolent of plastic. The bars did little to allay my thirst for reality. After all, alcohol is as ubiquitous as human suffering, but drink enough beers and a bar is a bar is a bar.
I have been a tourist in many strange lands, filled my mental checklist with all the proper prepackaged sites. As a result, I went to bed that night sated of body, but hungry of soul. There was naught but the wall between myself and the long ride back to Xian and my duty.
We made the 7:00 bus and immediately jumped conversation with an engaging German twenty-something named Marco. His visage was every bit the Teutonic ideal – blond and chiseled, and he was lively in conversation and with that idiosyncratic self deprecating humor that postwar Germany so deftly embodies. Marco worked as a bank teller and along with his friend Fabian was on a six month holiday in the orient. Despite being in his own words “Not very smart,” Marco proved to be disquietingly well versed in world affairs and late romantic era philosophy, dipping into Kant, Wittgenstein and Goethe on our ride in remarkably fluent English. Not very smart indeed – Marco and Fabian were easily the most conversant, knowledgable, clever foreigners I met in the city, counting many native English speakers among their number. In the past sixty years, something in the German educational system has gone terribly right.
The ninety minute bus ride ended with us passing high into the hills, overshooting our intended destination by a good 30 kilometers. Kyle seized the opportunity to unsuccessfully haggle with the cabal of taxi cab drivers which fringed this dusty, barren locale. They had united in an informal union and were not budging at their price of five dollars a head. Exhausted of niggling over pocket change, I went to join the Germans in their cab. They were not going to our section of the wall, with its bobsleds and chair lifts. They had heard a tip that a far section forty kilos hence was all but deserted, promising a difficult ascent bereft of tourists or guardrails. In comparison to the bustle of Beijing, it seemed all I was looking for. Frustrated in his attempts to broker an impossible deal, Kyle joined us in our van, and we chugged up the mountain road to the wall. I rode like an expectant pup, window down, hair blowing in the wind as we rushed through the freshly clear skies. The van honked at passers by as we bounded over the uneven pavement. This was the way I wanted, the rustic nonchalance which I had found alone years before in the Egyptian desert and which was visiting again this country morning. Adventure was bounding back with every pothole gouged in the path, and every hairpin turn about the winding mountain road set my heart beating ever faster.
The van let us off without further instruction at a quiet road path overlooking a ruined tower. There was a lake pooled languorously above a rusting dam, and Kyle and I strafed the handrails towards the ascent. Rounding the corner we encountered two toughs whose beurocratic credentials consisted of a hand lettered sign and a single weatherbeaten chair demanding two quai for walking rights. Ever a man of principle, Kyle was ready to come to blows over this perceived slight on his touristic liberties, and the men seemed happy to oblige before I slipped the 65 cents into their balling fists. We passed on and crossed switchbacks to arrive at a growing hillside, atop which snaked a parapet of the old wall. A rusty ladder, precipitously joisted into position between two loose stones, beckoned us upwards with no further fanfare. We climbed and the ascent began in earnest.
The wall here was well formed and dutifully cobbled but still unforgivingly steep, and the way was treacherous in our untrammeled shoes. As we rose to greater heights, new sections of the wall sprawled relentllessly before us. The sheer insanity – the audacity of the work smacked my awestruck eyes. The centuries of toil, vigilance, and slavery which built this continent spanning edifice!- I was familiar with the history, but walking the mountainous wall laid fresh mortar upon my consciousness. This wall was a miracle of engineering puts all but the pyramids to quibbling shame, this poem to the infinite hewn in roughly cut stone and naked toil. Like the pyramids its time had come and passed; men are unlikely to see its equal ever again in human history. We rose as the slope approached forty degrees, chugging our liters of water as we basked in the panoramic harmony of the unpeopled countryside. With every step we took we were more alone; with every footfall, we grew closer to history as it was lived.
We raced up a fifty degree scramble, finished, panting, and carelessly guzzled half of our water on hand. We had been on the wall only an hour but still distant heights loomed. Unwilling to rest, we pushed ourselves to scale the near peak, thinking to sit in silence and enjoy a bit of bread and water at the summit. These plans were scuttled by the miasma of pop music as we reached the local zenith; a gaggle of local teenagers had already colonized our intended bastion. We wearily climbed up and introduced ourselves in halting Chinese – the teenagers reciprocated in fractured English. Hand gestures were hastily employed by both sides; negotiations ended in pictures, but the music continued undimmed.
Gazing forth from the Rihana haunted summit, the rest of the path quickly sprawled into view. We had not even begun. A far peak rose impossibly in the distance, the wall first tripping down in a near vertical plummet before rising in a writhing serpentine course to this brilliant, cloud-wreathed summit. In the weary distance, its broken cobbles were interwoven with foliage, its timeworn parapets crumbled in romantic decay. Beyond our stand, not a living soul was in sight. Kyle and I passed the locals, sat at the edge of the path, and contemplated a descent into this untrod wilderness. The locals saw where we were going, warned us of the danger, and coyly invited us to go ahead. We needed some rest, however, and some time alone. Kyle and I sat, legs dangling over the precipitous edge which marked the bounds of antiquity, and tried to meditate on our little peak, shadowed by that endless snaking road rising in the distance.
Meditation, however, would prove futile. The exertion had only fueled my excitement; Kyle, for his part, was distracted and profited little from the delay. As we pulled out our loaf to break bread, a voice called out from behind. It was the 'Hallo!' of Fabian, followed closely by Marco's ready grin. The Germans had arrived, sharing ample bavarian provisions in a sausage fest worthy of Frankfurt. With these necessary reinforcements, our journey commenced anew.
I walked to the beginning of the descent and stopped, soon joined by the others. We looked over the edge of the tourist section in amazement. The moment of truth was at hand; the drop yawned forward mercilessly. As I dandled my toe over the edge loose rock heaved down a seventy degree slope, interspersed with brief but treacherous vertical drops. We stuck to the edge, held fast to the crumbling crenolations, and slowly made our way down the ruined causeway.
At some parts, the side of the wall had wholly fallen through. At one point, I knocked a small brick which triggered a chaotic landslide, nearly reducing our number by a quarter. The tread in my deftly haggled shoes was fast wearing away and our pace slacked. Water reserves were diminishing in alarming fashion – we went shirtless now not to bare our sex but to preserve our sweat. The sun rose into a defiant october blaze, and the temperature climbed as we dipped into the valley. Swarms of bees undisturbed by man roused forth – we had little choice but to cross our fingers and dive on. We found the bottom, saw a road ch perhaps lead back village and drank all but a few dear sips of our precious water. The pinnacle glared on ahead and we had another decision to make.
Deadlocked between prudence and the peak, I climbed up into the underbrush and my fellow travelers followed suit. We pushed up through towers utterly neglected save for foolish and bold, drank the last of out water and mushed bravely on. Then inexplicably, down from the summit echoed the footsteps of two friendly strangers. A frenchman and his son, they had spent six days caterwauling about the ridge, camping at the peaks. They informed us that our summit, seeming so close from the canyon floor was in truth another two hours up the winding way, but should we choose to press our luck, they cached a bottle of rice wine atop the mount. It was a tempting offer, and we resolved at the next clearing to consider the option in earnest.
As the two passed on I couldn't help but envy their idyllic journey – I had been on the wall for nearly three hours, and was fast coming to love its careless plunges, its dilapidated solitude, the sweat of the climb yielding vistas unequalled in memory. But even this was not enough to counterbalance our lack of water. We reached a clearing about halfway up our intended climb, saluted the far off mount, and agreed we had gone as far as we were able. As Kyle said, beyond the next summit there would be even loftier peaks to climb – of course, every new achievement reveals the next goal. Still, it was a beautiful view, undiminished in the coming descent.
As I placed foot over foot, China blossomed about me. The verdant countryside opened forth, accepting me, overwhelming my senses as it spread its shoots in all directions, surrounding me as I bounded down the crumbling ridge. “This is a great wall,” I quietly realized, understanding the magnitude of the path which I trod for the first time. In a world where few titles bear the descent to reality, this moniker earned its superlative, brick and mortar. A goofy smile broadened about my chapped, trail dusted face. “Hey everybody,” I shouted, my voice caroming off the canyon floor - “This really is a Great Wall!”
