The Great Wall is truly Great and other China Adventures

(6/29)  That's right folks, I joined the ranks of the millions of other Americans and foreigners that have trekked to the Great Wall and survived.  I'm quite proud and quite surprised, seeing as their were 1,003,435 stairs that I climbed in the process.  Yes, 1,003,435 stairs.  That's a fake number, but that's what it felt like.  For those of you who have never been, the Great Wall is not one long continuous wall, all flat and pretty and useful for warding off Mongols.  Oh no, it is discontinuous, full of stairs, and not so useful for warding off Mongols (Yuan Dynasty, Mongols got over the wall).  But still an absolutely unbelievable architectural and cultural feat.  Again, well done, China.  So, stairs, here are a few sets:

This is just part of the set of stairs we had to climb to get there.  This is not the Great Wall.  These are the steps you climb to get to the Great Wall.  Because, steps are fun.  Good work out.  Fun bonding experience.  Super effective sweat producer.  But all was not for naught.

 We did finally find it.  The real thing.  Sort of.  Most of the Wall we were on had been restored and rebuilt.  Because no restoration makes for a super unsafe will.  Which people don't like, for some reason unbeknownst to me.  Now, more stairs:

 Yes, all of that was stairs.  But is was also the Great Wall of China.  Which made it soooo much better. 

 As you can see, it was a bit misty that day.  So we were just very wet.  All the time.  So it goes.

This is one of my new favorite people at in China.  His name is Zhou Yubai, and is the roommate of a friend here.  He and I bonded over climbing the Great Wall, and have been fast friends ever since.  We speak a wonderful combination of Chinese and English (Chinglish), that most of the world would be unable to understand.  It's a grand time.

 

We finally got to the end.  But it wasn't the end.  I encountered this sign:

 

And then kept on walking.  Because really, why would anyone listen to a sign like this.  Life is short. We had to walk through this:

 

And finally got to this:

 This was probably the best discovery of the day.  Most of the wall is completely over grown with trees and bushes, and the unrestored parts are just as cool as the restored.

All and all, a brilliant Wall.  I would go back in a heart beat.

Now, that night, because we weren't tired enough, a few friends (both Chinese and American) wandered over to Wudaokou again and decided to try our voices at a karaoke place.  Now, in China (and Korea and Japan) they take their karaoke really seriously.  Here, you don't go to random bars, get plastered, and then sing in front of a bunch of strangers. Here, you get a private room, and song selection that could fill a 180GB iPod (for you old folks, that's a lot of songs) and a flat screen TV.  Oh, and lots of fun fancy lights.  Freaking fantastic.  My voice hurt the next morning.  Totally worth it.

I must also mention that they didn't have just Chinese songs.  They had Korean, Japanese, and more American songs than I knew what to do with.  And this was all for 45 yuan a person.  Yes, $7 for three hours of singing badly.  How great is that.

(6/30)  The last adventure of the weekend was the Beijing Zoo.  I was told not go by many people because of its high level of depressingness.  However, I was mildly surprised.  It had it's moments of depression, but also a lot of cool animals, a fair share of closed exhibits and pandas.  Just above what I expected of a zoo in China.  Yippee.
PANDAS

 

I felt like I was seeing the Mona Lisa all over again.  A bunch of Asian tourists in my way with their phones and cameras out.  And then I saw it, and it was smaller and sadder than I expected.  But that's ok.  It's still a panda, and we all like pandas.  

Something a little bit different about this zoo when compared with American is that you could get just a little bit closer to the animals:

When I say closer, I mean I probably could have petted a llama or a tapir if I had really wanted to.  And the "DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS" signs obviously weren't super effective either.  All of these things are just more reasons why China is strange.  But strange seems to be very good here.