Fun stuff about China

I was in China last month for a business trip and have some fun tid bits that can be interesting or at the very least, some things you can bring up when shmoozing with co-workers.


Firstly, the Great Wall of China is unreal! It's a crazy feeling to just stand on a piece of history that has really stood the test of time. Just to think that hundreds of years ago, there were battles fought on this wall, and a bunch of people died defending it or attacking it. It's nuts. When we first got there, I thought we were going to hike up to the wall, but our guide told us it would take at least 2 hours. So instead, you take a lift (like a ski lift) up to the top.


From there you're free to walk up and down the wall and take pictures, and all of that jazz. Now walking up and down the wall is no stroll in the park. Since it follows the ridges of the mountains, it's like hiking up and down rolling hills. I thought I was going to pass out from heat exhaustion. I've never sweat so much in my life. I think we only walked up about a mile or two and walked back. You can't tell in this picture, but my shirt is pretty much drenched. The wall itself is about 4,000 miles long and is the only man-made structure that you can see from space.


Instead of hiking back down the mountain after an exhausting two hours of walking the wall, the Chinese have come up with a clever way to get back down. You can either a) take the same lift down, that you took up or b) tobaggan down! I did the latter which was really fun, but could have been funner if you were allowed to go really fast. Unfortunately, I have zero tobagganing pics.


Another awesome thing to see in China is Forbidden City. It is right across the street from Tianmen Square. Forbidden City is where a lot of the royal families built their temples, houses, gardens, etc. This place is huge! I started taking a lot of pictures, but figured that when I looked back at them, I wouldn't remember were I was since they all look very similar. I think that I heard that none of the peasant people were allowed in the Forbidden City, and it was restricted to just royalty and their servants. That's a big place for just those folks. Here's a picture of the moat that surrounds and protects the city. Again, this was during a really hot and humid day in China, and my shirt is drenched in sweat. But you can't complain because all of that sweating has to be good for the baby bump. Oh and if you ever go to China and you pick up one of the maps from the hotel, the scale is really odd. On the map, Forbidden City looked so close to where we were staying, but it ended up being like a 30 minute walk!


Other than that, there was Olympic fever everywhere, seeing as we were there right before the Olympics started. One of our guides said that they made all of the people and businesses around the Bird's Nest vacate for the weeks that the Olympics were in town because they didn't want that extra traffic to be there during that time.


A few last notes. A lot of the people that I encountered who spoke good English there had hidden agendas. They might try to get you to come to an "event" that their "university" is throwing, or they might want to give you "English/Chinese lessons". Be weary of these people. I was naive and thought that people in China were just that nice. And definitely try the Beijing duck (also known as Peking duck). You can either put it in this English muffin type bread, or wrap it up in a this thing that looks like a tortilla, but it's made out of egg roll wrapping. Oh, and if you're thinking of watching a movie, it's a totally different experience. The ushers there seat you, and you don't have to worry about following along, because most of the movies are subtitled in Enlgish. How awesome is that?!?!? We watched Red Cliff which can be described as Kingdom of Heaven meets Lord of the Rings.



Next up: Japan