To the Great Wall...finally!

Grand Canyon is considered one of the "Seven Natural Wonders of the World."  Visitors often try to name the other natural world wonders.  Inevitably, someone guesses that the Great Wall of China is on that list.  Though the Great Wall is not a natural wonder, it is most definitely on the list of human-made wonders of the world.  

The most well-known site in China.

Gobbling up some 5,500 miles (8,850 km) of China's landscape, the Great Wall is not one wall, but a collection of short walls.  Construction of the wall began in the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE) and the 'modern' portions were finished during the Ming Dynasty (188-1644 CE). 

To climb the Great Wall was a great experience and we walked in the footsteps of so many before us.  The guides made a point to tell us that various presidents and other famous people have visited the Great Wall.  In fact, the staff there is so proud of its famous visitors, they gave us a book filled with 400 images of heads of state at the Great Wall.  We hope the next edition of the book has our picture!

The history of this cultural site is rich and fascinating, and worth further reading: http://www.greatwall-of-china.com/

Chairman Mao famously said, "Until you reach the Great Wall, you're no hero."  
We feel pretty heroic!

We climbed the Badaling section of the wall- the most famous of all
Great Wall sections.

AJ climbs one of the steepest inclines at Badaling- 70%!

No.  The naked eye cannot see the Great Wall of China from outer space.

Through the Eyes of Young People

The student volunteers who signed up to assist with our university experience are a treasure of the entire experience:

iPhone: Charismatic Hipster

Kelly: The giggly girl next door

Zephia: American culture and language enthusiast

Sun1: Honest, hardworking farm girl and ruthless pronunciation coach

Sun2: Exuberant teaching assistant with big dreams

They are bubbly and happy...at first many showed a bit of the Chinese shyness we expected, but they turned out to be far more outgoing! Once they found out we were friendly, the floodgates of enthusiasm opened. Unlike our professors who have a quiet body language and more reserved demeanor, the students are expressive and have a free-spiritedness. The teachers say this is because so much in the country has changed so much in just 10-12 years.

Part of the students' jobs is to show us Chinese culture, but many of the activities we do are "firsts" for the students, too: a trip to the school museum, a walk to Shenmen Temple, seeing the papercutting artist, and attending a Chinese Wedding are "firsts" for all of us. iPhone sneaks us into a wedding he is MC-ing. It's Zephia's first Chinese wedding, too. While iPhone, in a trendy vest and white shirt, is running the show, Zephia is whispering in our ears. "Do you want to get married?...Do American weddings have toasts?"  When the groom serenades the bride, she swoons over the romance, and after the wedding she asks Emily and Megan, "Now do you want to get married?"

Despite an amazing curiosity for Americans and the West, there are mysterious gaps in knowledge of their own culture. At 19, Zephia has never been to a wedding. Even though the "second baby ban" hasn't been consistently enforced throughout China, families have shrunken in size, making things like weddings less common. On another instance, we ask a few questions about the babies' funny split crotch, diaperless sleepers (What happens when they pee? Aren't the parents covered in urine all the time?); neither iPhone or Zephia know because they have never been around babies.

On our third week of classes, we all get a special treat. The head of foreign student services scheduled a date with a papercutter. The students take us to see this artist. Since they have never seen this kind of traditional art being done either, every one of our student volunteers shows up to escort us. The students call the artist Grandma to show respect for her age. Grandma can't wait to share her work with us. She laughs and takes us from one lacy papercutting to another. Almost all those hanging on the walls are in honor of The Party (aka the Communist Party). When Grandma opens her portfolios, however, it falls open to ancient images and legends. All four students excitedly translate for her, but many of the images she points to, they say, "Oh...we don't know this character/story; only old people know this." Many stories and traditions were lost during the cultural revolution, and this generation has not heard many of Grandma's stories.

The young people are hard workers. They are up for required exercise 7 days a week at 6 a.m. In the morning, the campus buzzes with the drone of students reciting their lessons aloud. The students have incredible pressure to succeed, ace tests and ultimately take care of their family whose social security is their offspring. We see iPhone grow pale and glassy eyed as the stress of the semester catches up with him.

Luckily, he plucks up for KTV. The students take us for this pop culture adventure as a going away finale. We head to the city center, and get our own private karaoke room. The students lose all shyness and belt out Chinese and American pop songs loud and shamelessly out of tune. We sing Richard Marx, Chinese songs, Michael Jackson, and Justin Bieber. They serenade us with a Chinese friend song and we serenade them with "Lean on Me." It's an international pop culture love fest.

We saw Zephia most frequently. She regularly brought us treats - bananas, pomegranates, black sesame gruel, moon cakes and weird french fry things that are so greasy they catch fire like a match. She asked questions with genuine curiosity, "Do all Americans have guns or what?" and told us to "Chillax." When she comes to see us off on the night before we head to Beijing, she is a picture of innocence. A sparkly hair bow, braces, pink hoodie, monkey sweatpants, and converse sneakers with cartoon characters painted on the sides. We swap some photos and gab in the living room for a bit. When she says good bye, we all hug and shower each other with, "I'll never forget you!" comments. We walk her to the door and as she descends into the stairwell, we hear her shout, "I LOVE YOU ALL!" before you goes. She texts us the next day, "Bon voyage! Travel safe. My heart is breaking."

Ours, too, Zephia...ours, too.

We laughed so much with these students. They brought us stinky tofu, squid on a stick, and hot, foamy lime jello-like beverages. They took us to cheap, sticky college dive restaurants covered in graffiti. They did little dances and leaps of joys when something delighted them. They helped us mail post cards, climb mountains, take the city bus, buy lotus flowers, and pronounce Ni Hao. They had no agenda except to have an adventure with some Americans and, in turn, gave us the adventure of a lifetime and an honest window into Chinese life that we would never have seen otherwise.

By Megan Kohli

Chinglish

One of the most amusing aspects of learning language and culture here in China is something that is affectionately called "Chinglish."  This is, obviously, a combination/translation of words from both English and Chinese.  And we don't always know what the translation is supposed to be!  For example, at a hotel breakfast one morning, Emily drank something labeled "Because Kraft Jane." The result?  Hot Tang.  Like hot Tang, we have seen all sorts of signs, packages, and clothing with questionable and sometimes completely baffling language.  Here are a few of our favorite (appropriate) examples of Chinglish.

Oh! Just what I needed.  A 'thing'.

I don't know what this creature is but it sounds cute!

That's what the livestock truck on the way
to the slaughterhouse sounds like, ps.

We googled "Palace Bucket Freak Alumni Association,"
hoping to contact the affiliated university.   No results.

Jujubes are a popular fruit here. 
 We don't know why they are used 
to adhere to certain, uh, body parts.

Placenta: the newest trend in China fashion!
All the girls are wearing it.

Can I get two yards of spicy bean curd material, please?
I'd like to make a skirt.

If it's alive, or once was alive, put it in
the rubbish bin on the right.

AJ is already feeling better about life.

The signs in the various scenic areas are
 very pleasant in their reminders. 

Any idea?  Nearly 6 weeks later we are still baffled.

Lights! Music! Millennium City Park!

We wanted to buy a video of the MCP performance, but weren't able to find one.  Enjoy a hastily made Kaifeng tourist video, instead!

Marvelous Millennium

Rangers, by nature, are independent people.  We like to do things our own way, on our own schedule.  Having guides on our trip has made us lose a little bit of our ranging freedom here in China.  Our schedule during Golden Week was completely planned for us, which sometimes meant we didn't even know where we were going!  Case in point: we knew we were going to visit Kaifeng, an ancient capital of China.  And that's all we knew!

With a current population of around 5 million people, Kaifeng is one of the Seven Ancient Capitals of China.  It is also a popular tourist destination.  Though we had guides, we knew nothing.  Neither, it seems, did they.  We asked what our plan was in Kaifeng our guides Sherry and Belinda answered, "There is a park and we will see a show with people wearing costumes."  Oh, well that explains everything!

Millennium City Park!  Like the bush says, it's the year of the dragon.

Turns out, through all the unknowns, we had one of the most amazing days!  Arriving at Millennium City Park in Kaifeng, we were engulfed by swarms of people, just three tourists in what the Chinese refer to as a "mountain of people."  A theme park, Millennium City Park is based on an idyllic painting representing the history of the Song Dynasty.  At first, we thought the park was a cheesy tourist destination, with sights and activities seemingly thrown together at random.

Upon entering the park, we felt we suffered from a slight case of traveler's ennui.  Rather than give into that feeling, we reached deep and found our second traveler's wind instead.  With restored aplomb, we dove head first into the sea of people and became true tourists. When we saw merchants dressed in old traditional Chinese clothes, hawking their wares of sugar art, plastic swords, and 100% silk-feeling polyester, we stared, transfixed.  Like listening to the Pied Piper, we followed loud music and crowds to a dragon dance and ensuing street fight (staged, naturally).  The fight represented a Hatfield/McCoy-type family brawl, and FYI, the women won.

Megan expressed her inner six-year old several times. 

Is this a giant man or a teeny umbrella?

Emily's new rattail also doubles as a mustache.

Still unsure exactly where we were and what we were experiencing, we ate up the frivolity of the theme park.  A fire-breather shooting 20-foot flames? Check.  Acrobats on horseback?  Heck, yeah!  A costumed monkey riding a sheep pulling a cart of children?  Done and done!  Whatever happened during the Song Dynasty, it must have been nothing short of a daily carnival!

Pretty sure the fire breather didn't have any eyebrows.

A monkey.  In a costume.  On a sheep.  Pulling a wagon.

With giddy child-like attitudes, we had such a fun time!  But as our enthusiasm and blood-sugar levels dropped, we left for dinner, knowing we'd be back to Millennium City Park for some sort of nighttime show with costumes.  Full on Kaifeng kuisine, our guides ushered us back to MCP's amphitheater.  The day's hubbub gone, the park deserted, we followed the crowd until we were ushered away from the other show-goers, and directed to the "Throne Room." Whaaaat?  With top-row seats, the Throne Room is for VIPs.  We are but peasants among royalty and do not deserve this treatment!  But, hey, it comes with free water and dried peas.

Please don't be the toilet!

Millennium City Park by night.

Taking our seats, we looked across the show's 'stage', really a large pond, and felt the energy that indicated something special was about to happen.  This show, at a place hours earlier we were clueless about, was nothing short of mind-blowing superlatives at work. Lights! Music!  Horses and boats.  Camels and fireworks.  Set against a backdrop that during the day seemed random, this musical play used the park to help retell the history of the Song Dynasty.  The words of the music, unclear to our American ears.  The music, exciting and tragic.  The lights and effects, epic and shiny.  The experience, unreal and unexpected.  During the finale we all wondered why it had to end. Couldn't we watch it again?  We were guests in the Throne Room, after all!

The banner for the Song Dynasty.

Horses, boats, neon.  Oh yeah!

On this boat rides a bathing, opera-singing concubine.  Or something like that.  We might have missed a translation somewhere along the way.

We don't know the full story of the Song Dynasty, but some raiders set the palace on fire during the show.

On a day that started with dreams of our ranger independence, we realized nothing in our dreams could prepare us for this ultimate experience.  The Song Dynasty has nothing on modern-day Kaifeng! And really, who needs a monkey riding a sheep, anyway?

Longmen Grottoes

This Buddha and its guards were funded by Empress Wu.

We roll into the city of Luoyang late in the evening and learn that this colorfully lit city has three sacred things - peony flowers, "shui xi" (aka watery food) and Longmen Grottoes (aka Dragon Gate grottoes). So we hit the Shui Xi right off the bat. We sip a jujube soup, rice pudding with sprinkles on top, and a few other soup-like dishes that we had a hard time keeping track of. We eat like royalty; historically, the emperors were the primary consumers of Shui Xi.

 

All those holes in the cliff are filled
with Buddhas carved out of the rock.

Although the city has a much livelier feeling than many of the others we've been to - festive Christmas light trees, fancy squares with music and dancing - we turn in early, exhausted after day of exploring. The next day we head straight for a World Heritage Site called Longmen Grottoes. Buddhas of all shapes and sizes riddle the limestone cliff faces with a honeycomb of history. With a history of over 1,500 and more than 100,000 Buddhas, the grottoes are simultaneously humbling, spiritual, and ridiculous. 

Some small....

....some huge!

The Buddhas were carved to honor family members, 

Many, many holes.

emperors, empresses, and community members as well as the true Buddha. We stand in awe of Buddhas the size of fingertips, Buddhas with colored haloes painted around them, intricate braided clothing, and Buddhas that tower over 60 feet tall. There is a hush in the place as visitors observe the incredible artwork of these ancient artists and the incredible dedication it took to honor gods or people in this way. There are some that have been polished dark from people reaching to touch them, typically thought by Chinese people to bring good luck. Many Buddhas have kept the details of their clothing and hands, but their faces have fallen off in chunks. Is that weathering or vandalism? We can't quite pin it down. 

Thousands of Buddhas.

Some walls have tiny villages of Buddhas. We learn that these are kind of like our brick walls with donors names in them. Communities pitched in money, and the bigger donors got a bigger Buddha. Some of the Buddhas have sacrifices at their feet, but the most valuable one we see on this day is an apple nibbled down to the core before being placed strategically at the base of the Buddha. 

 

The more you look the more you realize there is no One Buddha. Our

One of the few colorful Buddhas.

 favorite bares a striking resemblance to the Empress Wu, an outrageous and epic character who worked her way from concubine to Empress status. The Buddha with a woman's face and crown is as big as Wu's ego...about 57 feet tall. Wu, the only empress that we've learned about, was a ruthless and talented leader, vastly expanding the empire and state support of Taoism, Buddhism, education, and literature. So while this place can have a spiritual hush, it can also give you an awareness of just how much praise a big ego might demand. 

 

The crowning glory of Longmen Grottoes.

We are sad to leave too!

Longmen Grottoes is a big tourism center, so on the way out, we join in the national sport: Bargaining. We haggle our way down the row of shops and come away being better at saying and recognizing numbers! The souvenirs aren't bad either.

---Ranger Megan