hero status

December 31, 2008 at 23:59 (China) (Beijing)

Blasting Yoko Shimomura (Destati) on your ipod while standing atop the Great Wall, coat flapping in the wind, toes completely frozen, lungs threatening to collapse… something about that is just so… SO—

The tour guide said that there’s a saying that goes, “you’re not a hero until you’ve climbed the Great Wall.” Well, guys. Today, I have achieved hero status. Those steps were STEEP. They were as high as my knee. Looking down from the first watchtower, you’d be amazed how far up you climbed. Some people went all the way to the top; I stopped after I cleared the first level.  It was really, really hard to breathe up there. Kiki would have been fine, I think, but a brat like me who’s lived at sea level her whole life… well.

But that was the highlight of my day. The rest of the day was honestly pretty depressing. I mean, the Summer Palace was beautiful and amazing, but with all the peddlers and street vendors flocking after you with their wares and barely comprehensible English, that was when you realized how vast and how insurmountable the social gap is in China. There’s something sad about their persistence. I don’t know. Yesterday, there were construction workers striking outside of the hotel, because they weren’t getting paid for their work. At one point, they entered and lined up in the lobby. People started taking pictures, and I wanted to punch them.

Beijing is such a lonely city. It’s huge, and everything is sprawled out, so you get these long stretches of road lined with nothing but gaudy restaurants and hotels with gigantic flashing neon signs for the tourists, and you see people walking or biking alone in the cold and dark, and it’s just. You get homesick like that.  You get the feeling that everything and everyone is here specifically for the tourists tourists tourists, and that makes me a little sick. Does that make sense? But I know we are keeping to the areas that are custom tailored for tourists, so maybe it’s better in the city proper. I don’t know. Either way, I don’t want to be a downer, so I’ll stop talking about that.

Last night’s Peking opera was pretty awesome. After a bit, you learned to tolerate the, um, very stylized vocalizing they do. The sets and costumes were really pretty, and the characters were adorable. It was a tragedy, though (what do you expect with a name like “Forbidden Love”), so the last scene was a silhouette of Xu Xian—whose one true love was sealed away for all eternity—standing on a bridge, all by himself, holding an umbrella, and singing in a broken voice, “If you were a wandering fish, I’d be the waters of the ocean…”

Anyway. I hate to admit this, but I already am sick of everyone in this program. But we will not dwell on that. I can’t wait to get to Nanjing so we can be on our own.

Oh, and thanks guys, for commenting! I would reply, but the firewall here makes it too difficult; it’s all I can do to find a proxy that works long enough to let me post.

!! HAPPY NEW YEARS !! For me, anyway. Whoa, living in the future. It’s not a big deal here in China, so nothing’s going on. I’m exhausted anyway. Hope everyone back in the states is enjoying their winter vacation! I am going to pass out now.