Beijing: A greater wall than I had expected

Classic photo of China: parasol + cigarette

There's a "WKRP in Cincinnati" episode in which a Thanksgiving Day giveaway goes horribly wrong. The station drops live turkeys out of a helicopter and its horrified reporter on the scene describes their deaths as they smash to the ground. "As God is my witness," says the station executive who organized the promotion, "I thought turkeys could fly."

In that same spirit I say: I thought the Great Wall was horizontal.

What I knew about the Great Wall was that this wall protected China from outside invaders, that it was built in parts over various dynasties, and that the idea that it can be viewed from the moon is a myth.  What I was not prepared for, though, as we rolled up in our tour bus to the Juyongguan Pass north of Beijing, was how incredibly vertical it was. I started flashing in my memory all of these photos of people on the Great Wall and sure enough, they were standing on nice flat stretches and smiling. But no, this was not what I saw - we were going to be climbing up the side of a mountain!

Soon I realized, though, that I wasn't going to climb the entire thing anyhow,  and that I was on the freakin' Great Wall of China - who cares how high I climbed? And I also started to look around at the other tourists, who were more diverse than the groups I'd seen at the Forbidden City and who were far more interested in us. Everyone in our group was approached multiple times by complete strangers who wanted to take their pictures with us. Sure, it made sense to me when the men would want to pose with the attractive women in our group, but I was stunned when several different groups pushed past them to take their picture with me. Me? Yes, at least 4-5 times I posed with young men, men and women, and even one gentleman propped his elderly father (I'm assuming) on my shoulder for a picture. When we asked, our tour guide suggested that we Americans represented success, and that it was good luck to have their photos taken with us.

Christine (center), with SteveB as the photographer.

What struck me about this was that this is one of the few times that I felt different in China. For so much of the time in Beijing and Shanghai, I didn't perceive people looking at me either positively or negatively - I was just another person. It hit me at the Great Wall that I had expected to be viewed as more of a novelty as an American during my trip, and except for the Great Wall, I wasn't.

DPS represent! Alison (@ Brogden) and me.