Great? No, the Greatest!> Travels

Over the past two thousand years millions of Chinese people were involved in a seemingly never ending building project. A grandfather, father and grandson would labor next to one another on a structure that had and would become the life's work of their ancestors and descendants. They were building a wall, a Great Wall. When the grandfather was asked by his grandson, :"Why do we toil in the hot sun building this wall?" the grandfather might have had the foresite toa nswer: "One day people from all over the world will come to this wall that we have built. They will enjoy the scenery and purchase postcards, t-shirt and beverages from our descendants. This will be our legacy."

The GWC was never particularly effective at keeping out invading armies. Kublai Khan simply bribed one of the gate guards to let his whole army through. It's most useful function happens to be getting tourists to come by the busload and buy things that say they had come there.

Reading this blog I am sure you can tell much of what I have seen on this Asia trip has been between underwhelming and somewhat interesting. I spent yesterday hiking 10 kilometers up and down a section of the Great Wall and it was just about the greatest thing I have ever seen. Better than the NJ turnpike and Garden state parkway combined. Combined! As you've seen in pictures, the wall snakes along hills and is plenty wide enough to walk on top. The section where I went was only partially restored and not frequently visited by tourists, unlike Badeling, a section mobbed by tourists and apparently so restored it looks like new. No, this section was crumbly and ruiny and in that way that adjectives and adverbs fail to describe. Kind of like Clint Eastwood in the form of a wall. The comic relief on my hike was provided by the postcard saleswomen, spread along the wall almost like sentries. They would ask you in very broken English whether you would like to buy souvenirs, that they carried in large shopping bags. The thing is they would follow you, informing you that you could by later. Like 4 hours later. That's commitment considering the wall is a pretty strenuous climb. At first we (I was traveling with two American girls) would shake them off by explaining that we weren't going to buy postcards. This isn't as easy as you might think. For instance, we found if you say "Postcard" three times in a row, one will appear seemingly out of nowhere. All the while walking along you half expected them to come up, climbing up bothsides of the wall, a pack of postcards clenched in their teeth.

I have spent the past few days in Beijing, visiting the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Tian'anmen Square and the Lama temple. None really wowed me all that much, despite their significant sizes. Last night I watched the world cup final in my hostel's bar with a pretty large crowd of backpackers. The game was pretty boring other than Zinedene Zidane headbutting that guy in the chest. Right, so thats it for now.