Asian Vacation Part II

The Mutianyu portion of the Great Wall is a little more out of the way than other parts of the wall, but it is also the area Bill Clinton visited during his China trip, so it's not altogether removed from civilization either. When Clinton came, he went up to the wall via an enclosed trolley car. While acrophobic Sutong wanted to follow Clinton's path, Vivian and I preferred the ski lifts and convinced him it would be more fun.

I had pretty low expectations for the Great Wall- after all, I'd seen plenty of walls in my life. Perhaps because of this, the wall ended up being my favorite part of the trip. In real life, the fortification was jaw-droppingly beautiful, and exploring the watchtowers and climbing the giant steps were adventures in themselves.

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Thankfully, the steps weren't actually this absurdly challenging to climb, though it felt like it at times

Some of the wall's steps were so large and at such a steep incline that I had the sensation of feeling like a baby climbing up a giant staircase.

Apparently the wall has divided the countryside for so long that the vegatation on one side is distinctly different from that on the other.

The best part of the wall was the section past the "No admittance" sign, where someone had graciously carved out a narrow, narrow path through the overgrown shrubbery to the ruins of a wall watchtower. It was in that section which had been undisturbed by modern-day meddling, where I felt I could experience the "real" wall. I should note that many portions of the Great Wall have been restored, so it seems Korea is not alone in perfecting the great art of rebuilding and replicating.

yes that is Sutong's shoulder, and yes he is carrying a purse

Once we had finished traversing the wall, we rode wheeled toboggans along a giant metal slide all the way down the mountain.

"Asian vacations," as opposed to American vacations, require one to fill one's day with as much as is physically possible and then some, so immediately after the Great Wall, we rented bikes and rode over to visit the famed Beijing universities.

Being virtually ignorant of the Chinese university system, I honestly didn't think Qinghua and Beijing Universities were such a big deal, but according to Sutong they're like the MIT and Harvard of China, respectively. Both schools were teeming with tourists snapping pictures like crazy, especially at each of the main entrances. I was especially struck by the extensive gardens on each campus- if I hadn't known better I'd have thought the colleges were national parks instead.

Qinghua main field

The famed South gate of Qinghua, where countless little kids were taking pictures in hopes of someday attending the school

A recently constructed building at Qinghua, made entirely from materials imported from the U.S. We overhead a tour guide saying that they were trying to replicate Columbia's library.

Vivian also got yelled at for standing on this lawn, as grass in China is not to be stood upon.

Lake at Qinghua

a classroom building at Beijing University- Sutong said most of the students at Beijing U are working to go to grad school in the US and eventually become professors there

Rather uncoincidentally, major American tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Sun have set up divisions right across the street from Qinghua, making it convenient to recruit the brilliant techies the school churns out.

For dinner, we stopped at Quan Ju De Peking Duck restaurant on the first floor of the Microsoft building. Quan Ju De was one of two original Peking Duck restaurants, and has now become so successful (from feeding millions of hungry tourists, no doubt) that they've built chains throughout the city and are even publicly traded.

The meal was a fairly elaborate affair- after the waitress brought our cooked duck out to our table, the chefs meticulously sliced each part of the animal. First, the best skin was served, followed by a few plates of skin and meat, the head and breast, and finally a soup made from the duck bones.

Even though our servers were far from satisfactory and lied to us a number of times, that didn't detract significantly from our enjoyment of the food. I'd say the duck lived up to the hype, and each bite was like an explosion of oil in my mouth.