it sure is a great wall

that's supposedly what richard nixion said when we saw the great wall in 1972. well, saturday was my first time seeing the wall and i'll have to say... it was beautiful, impressive, daunting, and tiring.

so jarrett arranged a driver for us for the whole day saturday. the driver had a huge red flag car (a chinese luxury car) that had the most leg room i've ever seen in a car that wasn't a limo. the cost for the entire day was 800 yuen for the four of us. (that's less than $100USD.)
me, jarrett, sean, and fintan climbed into this monstrous car at around 8am and headed out to jinshanling. jinshanling is one of the most remote and undeveloped section of the wall that people commonly go to. it's actually outside the beijing providence.
we got to jinshanling around a quarter to 11. the good part is that there was a huge parking lot for busses and cars and it was compleatly empty. while walking up to the start of the wall we didn't see any other tourists. (the downside to this was that the hawkers stuck to us like flies on fly paper.)
our goal was to walk from jinshanling to simatai. a 10+ km walk that would take us past 32 watch towers. simatai is supposedly the most beautiful and rough section of the wall. (rough as in really steep and no steps, just damaged section of the wall where you're walking on sand and loose stones.) when we started walking the sun was blazing down on us, it was about 38C (100F), and i had over four liters of water strapped to my back.
it was a brutal hike with many stops to apply more sun screen. we encountered many other people on the hike (including a french tour group that was having a wine break) but only four other people who we met were doing the same hike that we were doing. (all the others were doing shorter hikes.) of course, there were hawkers along the whole route (usually hanging out in the watch towers) who would offer you coke and ice water.
the scenery around the wall was gorgeous. there were rolling green hills on both sides of us. the wall itself was impressive. the sections near the start and the end of the hike had been extensively restored (IMHO) and the steps were in great condition. but the middle section had a compleatly different feel. there were quite a few watch towers that were just half standing crumbling husks. if there were stairs then they were usually very uneven. in some sections there were huge stairs that took you strait up or down at ridiculous angles. for some of the watch towers you simply had to walk around them. (unless you wanted to climb 12 feet strait up the face of them to a door.)
the best part about the watch towers was that they were usually really cool inside with a breeze blowing through them. so we stopped in quite a few of them to catch our breaths, drink some more water, and much on some food.
the wall followed the ridge of some small mountains so there was a lot of up and down walking. looking down from the wall you get the impression that anyone thinking of invading china past this wall would have to be compleatly insane.
so the entire hike took us about four and a half hours. at the end there was a large valley that had a small suspension/rope bridge across it. after crossing the bridge we were in simatai. the wall doesn't stop there though. the wall continues up at a stupid steep angle right out of the valley. when you look up at it you can see that it runs along the top of a ridge with very long drops on either side. the views from there were probably more impressive that what we had seen on the section that we hiked, but at that point none of us were ready to start climbing again. we all decided that we'd leave that section of the wall for the next time we were in china.
from there is was a long walk along a road next to two reservoirs to get to the parking lot where our driver was waiting for us. luckily there was a zip line right near us that would take you sailing at hight speeds over the entire first reservoir, at which point you would take a small boat across the second. the price for all this was 35 yuen (about $4 USD.) since we were all really tired and sore there was no way we could pass this up. i have to say, it was a pretty exhilarating ride with my feet dangling at least a hundred feet above the reservoir.
after getting back to the car i immediatly tapped a bottle of er guo tou and started passing it around. this impressed our driver and some of the locals immensely. they were so impressed that one old lady offered me a couple green peppers for free. (i kindly turn them down.)
after a long ride back to the city we went to a duck resturant for dinner that our driver had recommended. the duck there was absolutely great and our driver joined us for dinner. we had an expensive bottle of bijou (52% liquor) that cose 168 yuen. we also had one duck, about four other plates of food, two desert plates, and a bunch of beer. all this cost us less than 500 yuen (less than $62 USD.) this meal at the fancy and famous beijing duck resturant would have easily cost over 1200 yuen. and the duck here was just as good or better that the duck there. i can safely say i'll be comming back here a few more times before i leave beijing. to top it off it's really close to where i live.
needless to say after all that walking, drinking, eating, and drinking i was _really_ tired. so after dinner i went strait home, took a shower, and passed out. i must have been asleep by 10pm.

the wheel is still turning

but the hamster is dead. when i got home this evening i was greeted by a small slip of paper taped to my door. the paper was covered with chinese characters but i was able to recognize three critical things on it.

the first was my building number.
the second was my appt number.
the third was the stamp i saw on each page of my police registration paperwork.
sigh. more police fun.
so i guess it's worth mentioning that i moved apartments. this past week i moved into anup's old apartment since it's quite a bit nicer than my old one. (it's in the building right next to mine and i don't have much junk so the move was really easy.) while this seemed like a great idea at the time i may come to regret it.
i had jarrett translate the note for me and basically it says that the police have been by my place a bunch of times and i haven't been there so i should come to the police station to register.
either i'm really unlucky, or the police have someone working for them in the building who let's them know when it looks like people are moving in or out, or both.
so i guess it's time to contact maggie (the admin) to get the long and painfull registration process started _again_...
sigh.

strangers always talk about

the weather. and it's miserable. this entire past week it's been about 100F (38C) _every_ _single_ _day_. i feel like i'm melting when i walk into work or walk to lunch. the days have been: 8AM == 80+F, 9AM == 90+F, 10AM == miserable until 9PM == 90+F, 10PM == 80+F.

thank god the humidity has been around 25%. dry heat is survivable. if it was humid i would have already booked my ticket out of here. of course when i check the weather report it's supposed to continue like this until next tue. then it will be in the 80s with thunderstorms. sigh.
blake tells me that it's a wonderful summer in SF with temperaturs in the 70s.
that sounds great... exactly what i want to hear.
so basically i'm wearing shorts and sandals into the office every day. the strange part is that aside from me and the two other americans in the office (bev and jarrett) no one else wears shorts. and most of them bike into the office. you think they would have noticed that their director (bev) is wearing shorts and that it's really not necessary to make yourself more miserable than you already are in this heat. a'well... i'll write it off to a cultural difference.
as i side note, i think my skin is about 10 shades darker then it has ever been in my entire life.

another one bites the dust

so today andrew has left us. it's been a great couple past weeks hanging out in beijing with him.

we had a going away dinner at bevs place last tue night. the best part is that he cooked the meal and it was great. bevs aie was there and was really surprised that a guy was cooking the meal. she also worked with andrew to help him with making some really great dumplings. there was quite a few people over and it was a really good time.
andrew was a very adventurous food eater and i'm sure my meals will be much more bland now that he's not here. i'll also won't be learning any more insults of foul phrases in latin.
the "rotation" part of the program is really kicking in for me now.
one of the next rotation people has also shown up. jarrett is here now and he's comming up to speed with the eating and drinking. he's also a native chinese so he has a home field advantage here. it'll be interesting to see how things change here as new people arrive.

the yanks are coming!

actually it's only one yankee that i'm interested in. ronda is comming later this month on the 19th!!! yay!!!

so ronda will be comming over to visit for 10 days from june 19th to the 29th. we spent a bunch of time on the phone last night and made the final arrangements. this will be great. i really miss my ronda. it's been a very long time since i've seen her.
ronda has actually been to beijing before a few years back and she didn't like it much. but i'm convinced that this time it will be different. everyone i've talked to was told me the city has changed dramatically in the past few years. also, i'm here. :) and since i've been living here i've discovered good places to eat, drink, and hang out at. this months
edition of "that's beijing" even included some articles about good equestrian places around and outside of beijing, so i'm sure well get some horse back riding in as well.
lastly, there is a massage place in the appt complex where i live, so if we're not out of town ronda can get a full body massage every day. (with the discount card it's only 50 yuen a massage... that's about $6 USD)
with all those options i don't see how she couldn't have a good time. :)
we've also started talking about the possibility of going to inner-mongoila or some other places outside of beijing. we need to start researching our options.

all work and no play

makes for a really dull blog. so i spent this entire past weekend working. pretty boring. since i was really burned out by sunday night i went to lush around 8pm to get dinner. they have a pretty good club sandwhich (the best one i've found in beijing) and coopers beer (from austraila... it actually has some flavor, unlike most the other beers here.) it turns out that sun night is open mike night, and since i was sick of working i hung around for a while.

the open mike night was pretty different from any i've ever seen. it was hosted by two guys on gituars who were playing songs and singing. things like sublime, ben harper, classic rock songs, etc. they were actually pretty good. also, most the open acts consisted of other people comming up and playing gituar and singing as well.
after about four or five beers i noticed that they had a small and delapitated drum kit on stage and i decided it would be a good idea to play along with some of the songs on drums. i talked to the guys running the show and they said sure. so i sat down for a few tunes to play drums. it was pretty entertaining. i did a pretty crappy job and eventually they told me that they didn't need any more drums.
i hung around for a while longer to suck down a few more coopers and then i headed home a little after 1am.

adieu, adieu

so anup has left us today. he's off to spend a couple days in south korea and then it's back to the bay area after being gone for over three months.

last night we had a farewell dinner at a really nice french-vietnamese resturant. the food was expensive and had small portions, but it was really good. anup was there with me, andrew, zhou yun, and yuan yi. much of the talk was about zhou yun and yuan yi pending trip to the states. anup is planning on taking them to tahoe, yosemite, and a bunch of other places. unfortunatly i'll still be in china while they are in the states.
so i'm going to miss anup. anup is a really motivated guy and if it wasn't for him i'd never have traveled around the amount that i already have. he's also a great traveling partner. anups travel plans seem to change on a minute-by-minute basis, always with new suggestions about where we could be going and what we could be doing. i love this type of traveling style. finally, he's a fun to hand out with and a great drinking partner (since he's always up drinking.) i've had a great time going around china with him and he'll be missed on future adventures.