A Lucky Day, July 12

Going back in time a bit here...I still wanted to write about our volunteers' tour. The second day of the tour was the first blue sky day we'd had in Beijing. It was very clear and quite blue. Our tour guide Rock informed us it was a very lucky day, and I assumed he meant because of the rarity of bluebird days in Beijing. He may have meant that too, but he started in on how we were going to the Great Wall the same day as the Mexican President. We hadn't even known that he was in town, although it explained all the Mexican flags we had seen several days before hanging outside the gates to the Forbidden City.

The Chinese, though, knew the Mexican President was in town and knew what day he was visiting the Great Wall from watching the news on TV. Not only Rock, but a Communications University of China (CUC) volunteer with us, explained that it was a very lucky day to go to the Great Wall because he was going to be there. The luck brought the Chinese out en masse, and I'm sure the clear skies added to the effect.

The Great Wall was crowded from the moment we got off the bus a quarter mile from the entrance gate. We soon found out that one entrance gate and a whole section of the Wall were closed for security for the President's visit. This meant that everyone in the public had to go in one entrance. While we were in line, that entrance was also temporarily closed because too many people were already on the open section of the wall. We could see the section of the wall right about the entrance gate, and for a while most of the people were headed deeper into the wall. Then it was empty for a while since the guards weren't letting more people in. Soon the tide of people that we'd seen entering earlier reversed as we saw guards ushering people out. Of course the mass of people waiting to get in were not about to back away from the gate and change losing their spot to get in. So all the people exiting could only get out singles file. The push of people around us wanting to get was intense, even though no one was being let in. It was like the subways here, where people push so close to the train even before it has stopped and passengers have unloaded.

Throughout this whole time waiting, everyone was baking in the sun, although many of the Chinese had parasols to protect them from the sun. One little Chinese toddler threw up on my classmate Sara's foot, but her mother still wouldn't take her out of the line. You could just feel everyone's desire to be up on the wall and not in line anymore. As soon as the gates opened, it was a mad dash. We didn't have our own tickets to get in, but needed to enter all in a row with Rock's group ticket book. Two CUC student volunteers helped hold people off when it was our "turn" to go in. These two girls were our new heroes. I don't think the whole group would have been aggressive enough to make in together, or maybe at all, without them.

The whole mass of people pushed us forward along the Great Wall at one speed, not at the speed we chose. Trisha tried to pause and take a picture of the President's procession that we could see descending the other section of the wall and was told by a guard to stop. I thought the luckiest part of the day (besides the beautiful sky that made me feel as if we were coming out of a long period of rain, not just pollution and humidity) was when the Mexican President finished his tour and that branch of the wall opened just as we were at the intersection with it. So we became part of a large crowd that pushed that direction but which luckily thinned out as people found their own paces and filled the new space.

The whole time on the wall was relatively crowded, but nothing like the entrance gate. There was also a feeling of camaraderie as everyone was united, some in huffing and puffing, almost all in sweating, in the same goal of reaching the high point of the Badaling section of the Great Wall. Achieving that point meant you were a hero according to Rock. My friend Marc found a kindred spirit in a 66-year-old Chinese man, whose grandson started telling him in English "Keep going," just like people in my group had been telling each other. The elderly man, who looked older that 66, used hand signals and his grandson as translator to proudly tell Marc his age, which wasn't stopping him from climbing the wall. He also made sure they got a photo together later.

The experience and the views were worth it--It feels real how long the wall actually is when you walk for and hour and a half and the wall only ends at the horizon, not anywhere in sight. Every hill seems like it would be the highest point until we got there and saw that the wall kept going and that the next hill looked higher. I think I thought the wall was only a movie backdrop or a 2D photo until being there in person. There was a draw to keep going and keep exploring but we knew that the bus was waiting for our appointed meeting time. I also knew (or hoped!) that I would be able to make it back to the wall again during my time in China, so I joined the flow of people descending the steep stairs and steep sections without stairs.