Our guide, Tony, got us checked in at the hotel, and we arranged a time to meet in the morning. He's a very snappy dresser. Jen at one point commented that Tony was better dressed than most women she knew. He showed up most days in pinstripe slacks with a business shirt and sunglasses, very metro-ish.
We headed up to our rooms. For Beijing, I had arranged for two 2-person rooms, since Rick would be with us, and I figured we’d put Rick and Charlie in one and Jen and me in the other. Rick was already checked in and on the way to being asleep.
But Charlie didn’t know any of this. We had kept it a secret that Rick would be joining us. We walked into our room, and there were only two beds, of course. Charlie turned and looked at me with an “oh, no, not again….” look on his face, remembering the scene in Guangzhou when we were given a room the size of a small closet without a third bed or even a rollaway. So I crooked a finger at him to say “come here” and headed out into the hallway. I knocked on the door next to ours, and while waiting for Rick to open it, I told Charlie that I had a big surprise for him; since there were only two beds in my room, he was going to sleep in this room—with Rick. He got a very confused look on his face, as if to say no, no, I couldn’t have understood this right; then he looked up at me and signed, “Rick? Here???” When I grinned and nodded just as the door opened, Charlie’s face just split in half in the biggest grin I have seen from him yet. He truly just lit up.
Rick had a nasty cold. We could hear him all night coughing from our room. Thank goodness Charlie is deaf.
The next day we started out bright and early for the Sacred Path of the Ming Tombs and the Great Wall. We stopped and picked up Hans, our Chinese sign language interpreter, from the subway station. He was a really sweet postgrad student at Beijing University who volunteers in their sign language association. I don’t think anyone in China actually works as an interpreter for the deaf—it sounds like they’re all just volunteers. Before we arrived in Beijing, I had given thought to actually canceling the interpreter because Charlie was doing so well in sign, but it was too late to cancel by that point, so we let it stand and Tony said we’d see how it worked out the first day or so. I’m glad we stuck with it, after all. He definitely added a new dimension to the trip, and Charlie really enjoyed being with someone who was fluent in Chinese sign. Hans did confirm that Charlie said he was picking up about half of what Rick signed and something more than half of what I signed but was not always letting on if he didn’t get it. So we started to get suspicious about every nod of the head, wondering if he really was getting it. But the signs started coming back to us more and more all the time, so I think he understands quite a bit, just not getting every single word but still getting the ideas.
We got some neat photos on the Sacred Path. We only got a couple of the statues in our photos, but if you want to see some really great shots, go to http://www.micktravels.com/china/sacredway.html and check out theirs. It was awesome! Then we went to a smoky little restaurant on the way to the Great Wall. Our guide here in Beijing, Tony, got a pretty quick understanding of our likes and dislikes, and most of the things he ordered were considered edible even by the Sherpa. Good thing, ‘cause we wanted to do some Great Wall climbing, and Jen was gonna need some calories for energy on that.
I was afraid that it would be just a walk in the park, since we were planning to take a cable car up and the sled down (since the cable car and sled were doing all the work, what more was there???). Not to worry. We got a workout, and we had the added excitement of almost getting killed, too.
Tony found out that we couldn’t take the cable car up if we wanted to sled down, because the cable car went to a tower in a completely different area a long way from the entrance to the sled/toboggan thingie. If you want to toboggan down, you have to take a ski lift up. Sherpa started whining. Claimed I had promised her an enclosed cable car (I never once used the word enclosed!) and that we would fall off this open ski-lift-chair-on-a-wire thing and be killed. I shushed the Sherpa, and up we went. It was c-c-c-cold going up on that thing! She got some footage with the videocam, but I think she had trouble turning it off because her fingers just froze to it. Just when we thought we were at the end, the crest of the mountain was coming up, it went through a junction pole and started up even further. The view was absolutely spectacular, by the way. Once we all got up to the very top, two by two, we realized this wasn’t gonna be a walk in the park. We were in one of the guard towers on the Wall, and the real work wasn’t in getting here, it was in getting from one tower to another. See the pictures on the photo section of the blog—it was really cool. In between each tower, there would be a combination of steps and steep ramps. The steps were not of uniform height, as they were all hand-made, so you really had to watch where you were going or you’d fall. Tony explained that the Wall was not just for guarding against invasion—it was a communications device. The dip in between towers was so that a clear line of sight from tower to tower could be maintained no matter what was going on at the top of the wall itself. If an impending invasion were sighted, the guards in each tower would light a torch made of wolf scat (wolf pu-PU, as Tony put it) and hold it up to signal the guards at the next tower. Each tower would then light the torch until the message got all the way to Beijing to the Emperor to warn of an invasion.
The Wall was just awesome. We climbed up to the roof of one of the towers for a survey. Rick was just standing there with his jaw dropped, and I swear he had tears glistening in his eyes (maybe it was just the cold, biting wind?) when he thanked me for inviting him along on this part of the trip.
Jen and Tony hung back after walking just one tower—Jen’s knee had been giving her trouble, and Tony has done this guide thing a million times, so he is no longer impressed. Rick, Charlie, Hans, and I walked about 4-5 towers. We wanted to go all the way to the top, but we ran out of steam and Rick’s coughing was getting really bad, so we headed back. When we came to the entrance to the toboggans, the Sherpa started whining again. She didn’t like the looks of them. Can’t we pleeeeeeeze just take the scary chair thingie back down again? Nope, the guide has already paid for the toboggan tickets, not the chair lift tickets. She’d have to climb down there to change her tickets. Rick led off and was out of sight in an instant. I thought I heard a faint “yahoo” about 5 minutes later, but I’m not sure, he was gone that fast. Then Charlie went. Charlie didn’t quite get the hang of the balance to get the thing going well, so he was going very slowly, not fully releasing the brakes. Hans went behind him and kind of pushed him along as best he could. Then Jen took off. I was behind her, and Tony brought up the rear. I waited a good while before heading off, since I knew they were all crawling behind Charlie, but I still caught up with them rather quickly, and Tony a minute later, and we all crawled down the mountain.
That’s when we nearly got killed. Despite signs every 100 meters telling people to beware of blind curves and to stay within a speed limit, an American idiot and his 4-year-old idiot apprentice come barreling down the mountain on a 2-person toboggan and never slowed down coming around the blind curve. They slammed into Tony’s toboggan, pushing the nose up. Tony was at least moving when they hit, so the impact on him wasn’t that great.
I, however, made a very bad decision in that split-second after hearing it coming. I stopped, figuring that it would end with my toboggan instead of causing a chain reaction all the way down through Jen, Hans, and Charlie. Bad move. Tony’s toboggan hit me square in the shoulders and flipped me up in the air, and I came back down hitting my tailbone on my toboggan, which folded in half and flew up, hitting Jen in the small of her back.
Jen was pretty bruised up. I couldn’t move at all for a minute, and when I could, all I could do was roll myself over the edge of the metal tubing the toboggans were in and drop off the side into the snow—I was afraid another speeding jerk might be behind the first one.
The guy never even apologized or asked if we were hurt. He just had a rather annoyed look on his face that were were still in the way and he had to wait until we took off again. Eventually I found my feet again, and got back on the toboggan and we made our slow, painful way down the rest of the mountain. As we were exiting the toboggans, we heard the staff who help you out of them and then remove them from the track yelling and screaming. Guess who they were yelling at? Jerk-O hadn’t even slowed down at the end, just came in full speed. Man, I feel sorry for his kid, growing up with an example like that.
All the remainder of that day and the next, I thought I had done serious damage to the sciatic nerve because I had severe shooting pains down the left back and leg when I tried to walk or even turn over in bed. But on the third day it started getting better, and I figure it must have just bruised the nerve really bad. It sure bruised me—I had huge bruises on my tailbone and down the backs of my legs, and it felt like there was a bruise between my shoulder blades, although it didn’t show one.
Of course, it didn’t take the Sherpa long to start in with the “I told you so” routine. I knew I’d never hear the end of this one.
After dinner, we went to see the Shaolin Monks do a Kung Fu exhibition. Jen described it well when she called it more of a ballet with Kung Fu moves. It was a story about a little boy’s journey to become a monk and master his Kung Fu. At one point, he fell from grace due to an illusion of a woman (why do they always blame women?) and the subtitles in English above the stage said his Kung Fu was damaged. That’s when Sherpa leans over and hisses, “That’s what wrong with us—our Kung Fu was damaged!” Got some dirty looks trying not to choke in a quiet theatre.
The next day, we went to the Confucius Temple and Lama Temple. The Confucius was inactive and under heavy renovation, but interesting anyway. Lama Temple was an active Buddhist Temple with monks all over the place and people burning incense and praying. It was fascinating, but the incense smell was overpowering, since they don’t just burn a stick at a time, each person burns an entire bundle. The Buddha statue in the main building was 26 meters high. (Think 3 stories high.)
The highlight of the day was the ice skating. I definitely had to sit this one out because I was still in extreme pain from being attacked by a toboggan the day before, and since I was just going to sit on the sidelines anyway, Jen (who was originally planning to sit on sidelines and take pictures of me falling on my keester) decided to stay at the hotel and try the internet connections again and let me do my own picture-taking for a change.
Charlie learned pretty quickly. I’d like to say he was doing triple lutzes and spins by the end of the session, but I’ll settle for the fact that he wasn’t wiping out too many times and no bones were broken. It was heart-warming to see Rick playing the role of big brother, helping teach Charlie to skate, holding his hand until he felt more sure of himself, helping him up when he wiped out. He was positively tender with him, and though I wouldn’t admit it to him, it made me cry. He’s wanted a brother for so long.
Back at the hotel, I was trying to wrap presents and asked Charlie for the tape. He signed that it was broken. Whaddaya mean, broken? How do you break Scotch tape, for cryin’ out loud? He brought it to me, and showed me the plastic container had snapped in half, no doubt the victim of rough luggage handling by the airlines. Then Charlie got a glint in his eye. I have already come to recognize that “I have an idea” look. A few minutes later, Charlie came back, having fixed the tape dispenser—he had seen Rick’s roll of duct tape in his luggage, and had duct taped the whole thing back together. (See picture in Beijing album.) Rick all of a sudden started chortling with glee, and yelling, “Now he’s REALLY my brother!!!” Rick fixes everything he breaks with duct tape, including his car. He has a Saturn. They don’t just dent, since they’re not made of metal, so when he had his first accident, he ended up with some holes in it, which he covered over with duct tape. He then got a bumper magnet that says “Silence is golden, but duct tape is SILVER” and since it wouldn’t stick (again, Saturns are not metal), he duct taped the magnet to the bumper. Rick and Charlie are now truly brothers, but the bond is not blood—it’s duct tape.
The next day we went to the Summer Palace. I think this was my favorite place on the Beijing part of the trip. It is easy to imagine being the empress and wandering through the outdoor arches and pine-arbored walkways. So ornate, very beautiful. I got some pictures, but they don’t really do it justice.
We did a “drive-by” (that’s what our itinerary called it) of the two stadiums that will hold the 2008 Olympics. Again, see the pictures. One is called the Bird’s Nest, and the other is called the Bubble Box. Two very interesting-looking edifices. Olympic village is still under construction, building huge buildings that will house all the athletes and all the workers it will take to put this gig on.
The Olympics is a big deal, and souvenirs are already on sale. At every major site, not just around the Olympics arenas area, vendors have Olympic babies for sale in some form or other, and they come after you shouting “Are you a baby?” Tony finally clued me in—the Chinese word for Olympic sounds like “are you a,” so they’re running after us asking “Olympic baby? Olympic baby?”
That is one thing I won’t miss. It is impossible to window shop in China without being accosted by someone trying to sell something. Vendors will bump into you deliberately on the street, strike up a conversation and beg and plead with you to come visit their shops. At places like the Great Wall, you literally get mobbed by vendors hawking their wares. They smell money the second they see our round eyes. And if you get a good deal, it’s “just for you.”
One great example: As we left the Summer Palace, an old lady started in on Rick. She had a dark red dragon in a box. Rick is a dragon collector, and he really wanted a dragon from China, anyway, so he asked her how much. She told him 126 (yuan). Having been warned that you should never pay what they ask for, he bargained her down to 70, and was feeling mighty proud of himself—until, having given her the money and taken possession of his dragon and turned to leave, another old lady starts chasing after him, yelling, “Just for you—30 yuan!” He turned to look, and this old lady was holding out the same EXACT dragon he had just paid 70 yuan for, and the first old lady was sitting back and grinning.
Just to rub it in, I bargain the second old lady down to 20 yuan, and bought her dragon myself. Gave it to him later so he could have a pair of bookends. Good reminder. He hates me.
In the afternoon, we visited a Hutong, which is an ancient neighborhood. Talk about a sense of community—you ride through by pedicab, and the first thing the Hutong guide does is take you to the public lavatories. Trust me, you just don’t wanna go there. Literally. Especially when it’s cold enough out to freeze your @$$ off. We had a nice visit with a local family who are considered wealthy by Hutong standards, since they are the only family in the neighborhood to have their own bathroom and shower. Their “house” was 3 rooms. It was worth $500,000 US dollars. Really! They heat with coal florets, one stove in the whole joint. Their kitchen has a propane bottle stove that they have to buy a new propane bottle for once a month. All what we here would consider rather primitive living conditions, but they have some beautiful and very valuable furniture. They are retired, so they are not allowed to drive. In China, they limit the age at which you can drive, and the elderly must get around by bicycle.
A tour like that certainly gives you cause to reflect on our level of creature comfort.
We then climbed the Bell Tower and had a tea pouring ceremony in the teahouse in the base of the tower. At one point, while we were shopping around in there, Tony asked Jen to put on his sunglasses. She thought maybe there was some optical illusion or something he was trying to get her to see, so she put them on and then looked up, and down, and sideways. Nothing. So she looked at Tony and asked why she was wearing his sunglasses. He replied because she looked so beautiful and mysterious, he just had to see how she looked in them. She took them off, trying hard not to laugh. When she mentioned it later that night, she was astounded that he would be making a pass at her. I don’t see why she should be so shocked, because she is really beautiful, inside and out. But it was funny to see Tony acting like a schoolboy over her. (Reminder: married woman, 3 kids….)
The next day we went to Tiananmen Square. Jen stayed behind, since she’d been there and done that already and wanted some computer time. Tony was distraught.
While at Tiananmen, we visited the Great Hall of the People. Rick did not realize this was considered a government building, not just a tourist hotspot, which was unfortunate, because they had a security check at the front door. For those of you who do not know what I mean when I say it was deja vu all over again, please go to the archive on the left of your screen, and find an older entry from early 2006 titled "What NOT to take to a federal building."
That evening we went to a Hotpot dinner. Can’t even begin to describe it, you’d have to see the picture to get an idea. Tony had done pretty good at that point, choosing meals that Jen could eat, but this one blew his winning streak. Jen just did her pushing food around game throughout the meal and drank a lot of beer.
I actually enjoyed the hotpot meal, but I drank a bit of the beer anyway since the food was so spicy. After we left the restaurant, we hiked to the subway station to head for the evening’s entertainment, and since it was so cold, Jen and I were arm-in-arm, cutting up like high-schoolers, just giggling and having fun. Okay, maybe a little tiny bit buzzed. But we were harmless.
That night we saw the Peking Acrobats. Awesome. Those kids simply have no bones in their bodies. Bodies are not meant to bend that way.
The next day was our flight home. We had a morning free of sight-seeing, so we slept in for a change and had a leisurely brunch before packing and checking out. Headed out to the airport at 2 p.m. Jen was a little worried that Tony would try to plant one on her and she’d be forced to smack him, but he behaved himself and settled for a quick hug when we said goodbye.
We saw Rick off on his flight, then settled in for a long wait until our flight was up. The flight back was fairly smooth, and Charlie slept through most of it. We had sent a note to the Captain asking if Charlie could visit the cockpit after we landed, and he sent word back agreeing. But what that meant, since Jen had such a tight connection, is that Charlie and I stayed behind on the plane while she literally ran to catch her next flight, so we never really had time for the emotional good-bye that we were both dreading.
The cockpit was nice. The pilot actually let Charlie sit in his seat and man the plane, which was cool. I showed Charlie the “steering wheel” and showed him that if you pulled it the nose of the plane would go up, if you push it the nose would go down. He just nodded sagely and then showed me the altimeter display and showed how the plane would tilt from side to side. Okay, I give up. How an orphanage kid knows some of the stuff he knows is beyond me. I’m beginning to think he has some other life experiences. Either that or they lied to me about his origins.
I miss Jen. It is uncanny how two total strangers can turn out to be so compatible. After we’d been together for a week, I asked her which of my habits drove her totally bats (because I was thinking it was so funny that she didn’t have any traits that drove me bats), and she laughed, because she had just been thinking the same thing in reverse. It’s so neat to spend time with someone who sees things through pretty much the same eyes you do, has the same sense of humor you do, and thinks the same thoughts you do and can finish your sentences in the same breath. We turned out to have so much in common it was uncanny.
It was amazing that this trip went so well, considering all that could have gone wrong. There were hold-ups here and there: The leaky plane toilet that almost kept me from getting to China, the camera going missing after adoption day, being attacked by one of my own countrymen on a wheeled device, but none of it was insurmountable, and we always managed to find that the blessings outweighed the problems.
Now if they’d only find Jen’s suitcase….it figures, they lost it on the last leg of the trip, between LA and Denver.
If you smell something burning, look at the Sherpa. She’s breathing fire…
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