It’s official – we are now overlanding. First stop – The Great Wall. We rumbled our
way out the city for a 4-hour drive to Jinshanling. This is the less “touristy” section of the
wall that has no camel rides, street buskers or fake Ming Dynasty
soldiers. What Jinshanling does have is
a cable car that takes you to the top of the mountain where the wall begins. On a cooler day hiking up is an option but we
decided to cable car up and hike down since by then it would be early evening
and much less likely to have one of us drop dead from heat exhaustion. The cable car was not what
we expected. We thought it would be a
large car that takes 20 or 30 people at a time and 10 minutes to get to the
top. Instead it was a barely two person
car encased in clear plastic (Zero ventilation) that took 25 minutes to get to
the top. If you’ve ever wanted to
experience what it is like to be a baby or a dog locked in a hot car then take
this ride up. You won’t be disappointed.
Once up there the wall is truly a site to behold. It goes on forever on both sides. You can’t even begin to imagine the manpower
and skill it took to build. We hiked for
about 5 km and rarely saw anyone. We even celebrated one of the group member’s
birthday complete with cake on top one of the old guard towers. We spent the night here and had the place entirely to ourselves . Well almost to
ourselves. When were having dinner alone
in the massive dinning room there suddenly appeared out of no where huge groups
of Chinese men smoking, talking extremely loudly and taking up all the tables
around us. They ordered massive amounts of
food and beer and filled the place with cigarette smoke and constant
yelling. I am learning that dinner is
never complete until you have an asthma attack from second hand smoke and a
migraine from all the yelling.
The next day we drove to Datong. The city itself is unremarkable. Its predominant industry is coal so
everything is grey and depressing. It is a strange mix of old and new.
There is a “walled” section of the city that is full of old hutongs that
are interesting to wander. Sadly, the
new city has taken to tearing these all down to rebuild them again as a tourist
site. The “new old town” looks nice but
of course, no one lives there – it’s for show.
However, the big tourist draw here are the Yungang Grottos – a series of
caves with effigies of Buddha carved into them.
After the grottos the Good Doctor and I wandered what was
left of the old city. It’s amazing the
life that goes on in the narrow alleys of the hutongs. Everything is there – hair salon, take out
food, bicycle repair shop, dog meat butcher.
So if you want a hair cut and some minced dog for spaghetti later on its
all here.
That night we had a group dinner at a street restaurant that
specializes in leg of lamb on hot coals served at your table (we are assuming
it was lamb…). We sat at the “vegetarian
table” with Sarah (birthday girl) and her partner Wendy because for one thing, having a giant leg of
lamb with a bucket of hot coals in your face is about the worst thing to have
when it is 400 degrees out. The lamb
table coped by drinking kegs of Chinese beer and by the end of it it
showed. Keith became convinced that an
elderly man on a bicycle with speaker box was walking up and down the street
blasting “Giddy Up My Bear.” That and
the fact that Keith gets cruised ALL THE TIME when we are out at night has made
things pretty interesting. (BTW, we
never did find out what the old man on the bike was advertising. All we know is periodically a man would
approach him, they would disappear behind a parked car and then both would
emerge very happy.)
(Side note: You have all heard about the earth quake and the riots/killings in the North. We are safe from the earth quake. It happened in the southern regions. However, the riots are in an area we will need to pass through in 3 weeks. Keep your fingers crossed. Otherwise it is a very L-O-N-G way around to get home. But then, we do have Richard, international man of mystery on the trip and he did say he knows of some safe houses...)
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| The Great Wall that came with Birthday Cake! |
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| Love on the Wall |
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| Proud Warrioress on the Wall |
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| Every night the wall is mopped clean ;-) |
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| Contraband Buddha photo I snapped while Ken distracted the guards with his charm and beard |
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| Gangsta Buddha |
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| Entrance to the Grottos |
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| Hunger Games 2.0. Notice my arrow heading right to the bull's eye! (Ken's went past the target and shot a gardner) |
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| Bullet Hole Buddha |
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| Chinese checkers in the Old City |
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| Too cute to be eaten! |
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| A day in the life of teenager girls in the Hutongs of Datong |
