The Great Wall at Jinshanling (China)

For an early start, breakfast was pointing to order bits from a busy hole in the wall next to the metro station: a large square of dough hot from the fryer (yes, please!), a Chinese egg sarnie (yes!), steamed pork buns (eh, ok), and sticky rice and dates wrapped in a leaf (hell, yes!).

Started around 200 B.C. and built by the Qin and Han dynasties, the Great Wall has about a half dozen options available for a visit from Beijing. We chose the section at Jinshanling. The nearly 3 hour drive out of the city got us far enough away from almost all the day trippers who crowd closer sections like those at Badaling and Mutaniyu. That's not to say that Jinshanling's amenities were rustic.

Construction was booming. Billboards advertising new properties herald a future where Jinshanling will seem more akin to a chic ski village than remote outpost. One advantage of the gentrification were brand new toilet facilities, especially as there are none whatsoever on the Wall itself. The path up to the Great Wall had a fair incline, which was paved smoothly and with new steps. The cute souvenir shops, colored banners, and piped music lining the path made it feel eerily like we were in line for the big ride at a theme park.

At the top was the gate at Jinshanling, and we were headed to the gate at Simatai West. The section is mostly restored and broken up by a series of watchtowers. The Great Wall follows the ridgeline of the surrounding mountains so maybe priming one to think of rollercoasters beforehand isn't such a bad idea. Some parts were so steeply sloped that the Wall curved like the construction of a bridge, and other parts were graded with hundreds of unevenly sized steps. I was grateful I'd brought my trekking poles and that it wasn't rainier, making the bricks even more slippery. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't ideal. The Wall was shrouded in fog so while the watchtowers and ramparts were very cool, materializing out of thin air, visibility was such that we'd have been useless as lookouts for any Mongol invaders. Our pace was sweaty and grueling since an early map showed almost a dozen watchtowers to pass within the 2.5 hours allotted to get to the east gate and down to the bus parking lot. A little over an hour in, we were surprised to discover there were only 4 more watchtowers to go, rather than the 8 we were expecting... so either we misinterpreted the map (which became an all too common occurrence during our trip in China), grossly miscounted watchtowers on our route, or inadvertently passed through some bewitched portal in the mists of time... You decide.

Hiking gave us a good appetite for dinner back in Beijing. Each of the provinces have their own offices in the capital so we decided to try out the restaurant catering to workers from Sichuan since we wouldn't get a chance to visit. An enormous basin with red chillies, peppercorns, and bay leaves floating arrived at our table. The college kid serving us had to demonstrate skimming out the spicy stuff so we could reach the fillets of freshwater fish below. The other dish we ordered was frog legs stir-fried with piquant, pickled peppers. Both had enough bones to make eating a bit cumbersome, but no question that the flavors were authentic and the good kind of burn.

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Beijing (China)

Our arrival into Beijing was near midnight, and the taxi driver had some difficulty locating our hostel down one of Beijing's ancient hutongs. The narrow, tree-lined alleyway is a surprising respite from the bustling city, and home to a community center and small police station. Street sweepers were out every morning, and most of the traffic pedaled by on bicycles or drove small electric vehicles.

We eased into Beijing with a morning visit to the Temple of Heaven Park, a vast greenspace in Confucian design, surrounded by a stone wall in the middle of the urban landscape. We were early enough to catch the routines of locals. Elderly folks were very active - playing paddleball like it was a day at the beach; chanting and smacking themselves in unison in a sort of head, shoulders, knees, and toes exercise to get the blood flowing presumably; playing impressive hacky sack with what looks like a giant shuttlecock (a past-time called jianzi); and scrimmaging in actual badminton with the nets strung up between the trees. For the less strenuous but still social, there were choirs singing Peking Opera and amateurs gently swaying in dance routines with colorful scarves. Dotted here and there among the thousands of knotty cypress trees, there were individuals mediating or doing tai chi, birds with beautiful long tails darting from the tall grasses, and echoes of soft music piped in to speakers along the main paths. A variety of outdoor pavilions and pagodas drew the larger numbers of visitors. Crowds also gathered in the rose garden, snapping selfies in the most riotous display of every shade of red and yellow and white blooms I've ever seen.

The hordes were much more daunting at the Forbidden City, the sprawling palace complex that had been off limits to the public for 500 years during the reigns of the Qing and Ming emperors. The flood begins at the Meridian Gate, where all must enter. Wide courtyards, grand staircases, and bridges carved in marble separate what seems like an endless succession of Halls, Gates, and Palaces. Each structure is named for some lofty ideal or trait, like the Hall of Supreme Harmony or Palace of Heavenly Purity. Certainly, the ornately tiled roofs, elaborately painted timbers, and fierce guardian sculptures live up to the exalted names. Unfortunately, many of the interiors were actually empty, closed to access, or at best, furnished but dimly lit and visible via thousands of noses pressed into the plexiglass outside. Some of the smaller buildings deeper into the complex host exhibits of various themes in the collection, but to be honest, the labyrinth had already worn us out to muster much enthusiasm then.

We had no lack of enthusiasm for delving into Beijing's culinary offerings. Peking duck, roasted traditionally over fruit woods, cost a pretty penny but came with fixins for a party - tender baby bok choy with mushrooms, a spicy slaw, garlic and chili eggplant, crunchy lotus root in a pink jelly, and an addictive peanut and red onion salad. The duck itself arrived whole with the cook expertly slicing even portions with thin rinds of glistening, crispy skin, like a master carving a jamon iberico. Washed down with eight treasures tea (an aromatic blend of flowers, dates, nuts, and rock sugar), it was a grand feast.

Wangfujing is a famous pedestrian shopping area, but we were only buying street food. A narrow lane off the main drag is so packed with people and food stalls we felt in danger of being bamboo-skewered ourselves with so many double-fisting. The famous photo opp are the still-twitching scorpions on sticks. We bypassed these. As an entomologist, I've sampled a slew of specimens, and frankly, the scorpions seemed all exoskeleton. Giant soup dumplings, on the other hand, were a fun novelty, slurping the soup out with a straw and then trying to figure out how to eat the deflated result. Rich went with predictable but delicious choices - some kind of tentacles grilled and spicy, and for pudding, deep-fried rice flour sesame balls. I also tried and loved a kebab of unknown fruit, glazed in hardened sugar syrup and sesame seeds. The fruit looked like a rounder strawberry, tasted like cooked rhubarb, and contained hard seeds. Later we found out the fruit is Chinese hawthorn, and the kebab form is a very traditional treat known as tanghulu. Yum!

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