The Great Wall, Part One

As we descended into in Beijing on Tuesday, my first impression was, "Wow, the sky is dark yellow." My second impression was, as previously mentioned, "We seem to be going awfully fast still..." followed quickly by, "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" No, it wasn't quite that dramatic a landing, I'm just checking to see if Johnny is reading the blog. But the lack of visibility was dramatic. The local paper I read during the flight explained that the culprit for the terrible air quality over Shanghai and Beijing was an epic sandstorm raging in the Southern Xinjiang Basin. It also explained that dust is not the only ingredient in such sandstorms, as they also contain "toxic pollutants from coal combustion."

At any rate, breathing was not our immediate concern. We had been bumped to a later flight from Shanghai, which was subsequently delayed, meaning that our driver holding a sign with my name on it had given up and gone home. Without Phil or Rebecca along, we began to encounter the language barrier. Up to this point I had rigorously catalogued the extensive list of phrases we'd learned thus far: hello, thank you, how are you, you're welcome, I don't need it, I don't want it, waitress, and bottoms up. No combination of these phrases could locate our driver until we found a helpful woman at the tourism desk and called our hotel. Eric soon would be on his way with a driver. To kill some time we decided to sample the Terminal 2 Pizza Hut and quickly learned why corn never really took off as a pizza topping in the US.

The drive from the airport was a harrowing one for reasons opposite those that made Shanghai taxis such an adventure. Our driver rarely exceeded 60 km/hr (37 mph) in the left lane on the freeway. It was a good idea not to look out the back window as cars swerved around us going twice that speed. But we noticed another significant difference from Shanghai roads: very little honking. Perhaps a lingering after-effect of an Olympics politeness campaign?

I'm being told that I'm slowing us down and making us late for today's sightseeing in Beijing. This is not the first time I've been told such a thing, but it's forcing me to wrap it up before ever even getting to yesterday's trip to the Great Wall.

As mentioned above, a sandstorm was wreaking havoc on visibility and our lungs, so I was a bit concerned that our trip to the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall would lack the coolest element of visiting the wall: watching it stretch endlessly into the distance. I will end with this picture and a cliffhanger (somewhat literally, as will be described in future blog posts). Will we actually be able to see the wall? Will Dan conquer his fear of heights? Will we fall prey to aggressive souvenir vendors?

The Wall is out there.