The centerpiece of today’s touring was a visit to the Great Wall. As we were gathering in the hotel lobby for our departure, Susie said, I don’t feel well – my stomach. She had been taking an antibiotic for a sinus infection and some other meds and apparently that, plus changes in diet, was affecting her – seriously. So, she stayed home.
About an hour’s drive NW of Beijing brought us to a segment of the Great Wall of China. I’ll leave the historical context to you. I focused on the physical aspects.
From where we parked, in a gap in the mountains, Wall segments follow ridge lines upward to the east and west. I took the west branch because it looked the steeper. Jeff, Valerie, and Malia took the east branch because Jeff would be carrying Malia on his shoulders and Valerie gets uncomfortable around heights.
These two pictures illustrate the steepness of the climb. That's not the top up there, just the first parapet. And, those aren't protesters with the red flags, they're tour leaders.
Couple more pix:
Going down: Hand rails at knee-height were not easy to use. At this point I thought I might be hallucinating: there’s Susie’s red hat, seen round the world. Is she here?
Alas, it wasn’t Susie. It was a man with a thick Middle Eastern accent and as I met him, he grabbed me and had his buddy snap a picture of the two of us. Why? I don’t know.
More walking to get these views, we were really dragon.
So, George took us to an acrobatics show. Very talented acrobats, but I kept falling to sleep – exhaustion, heat prostration, smog overdose, … . Did manage to get a couple of pictures. Valerie tells me I missed the 12 girls on one bicycle. I did see the six girls in a combined handstand, though.
After this, dear reader, things got really interesting. We bused back to the hotel and I told Susie about what we had seen and done (she was feeling somewhat better, but not comfortable). Let me see your pictures, she said. I looked. No camera. My best guess was that I had dropped it in the theatre. I had had it on my lap getting pictures between naps, but I didn’t remember ever sticking it back in my pants pocket. What with occasional dozing off, I might have dropped it while we were there or when I got up to leave. I tried to call George, but I wasn’t getting the right prefixes before the number he gave us. Went down to the lobby to get dialing instructions. There was George. I explained my plight. He called the theatre – no answer. He suggested I take a cab over to the theatre – about a 20 minute ride - and see if I could find my camera. He was busy figuring out hotel and tour bills and couldn’t leave. He did write out, in Chinese, the name and address of the theatre and of our hotel. Show these to your cab driver and that should get you there and back, he said.
And it did, and the rides were thrilling. Got to the theatre just after a later show had let out. I went in and could tell that they were cleaning up and closing down. Told an usherette about my problem. She took me into the auditorium. I didn’t know exactly where I sat because we came in just as the show was starting and got into our seats by stepping over the back of them. I checked the general area and didn’t see anything, but I probed around with a toe beneath the back of the seats and on the third or fourth seat I probed, there it was: my camera!
Cab driver number one had taken me to the theatre essentially by the reverse of the route we had come home. I recognized the street along the north side of the Forbidden City. Cab driver number two took me home by a different route – down a broad, major boulevard with big-time hotels and office buildings. Am I being taken for a ride? I thought, but didn’t dare ask. (Of course you were being taken for a ride, you might say. That’s what cabs are for!) However, about the time I was really getting nervous I saw that we were on the boulevard that runs between Tiananmen Square and the south side of the Forbidden City. We were paralleling my earlier routes on a street that moved much faster. (Of course, the way this driver changed lanes, we weren’t very often parallel to anything.)
At any rate, my camera and the day’s pictures were rescued. In hindsight, several things had to happen just right. I had to find George to get the necessary info and I had to get to and into the theatre while it was open, somebody had to let me look, and the camera had to be there. I think George and Susie thought I was probably wasting two cab fares and I certainly wasn’t confident, but it seemed worth a try. Probably driven by my tightwadiness -- I didn’t want to have to buy a replacement camera. I did wonder about the sanity of criss-crossing a foreign city late at night where I couldn’t speak the language or read the street signs, but you need to be, and want to be, trusting. You can supply your own moral to this story.
Tomorrow, Sunday, we leave for Zhengzhou where, on Monday, Macy will join us. Stay tuned.
Picture taken from camera held in outstretched arm while hanging by the fingernails of the other hand.
Hang in there.
Cheers,
No comments:
Post a Comment