As I walked through the square to the bus terminal, I was approached by dozens of vendors selling everything from postcards to the gaudy Chairman Mao lighters that lit up and played Chinese music. I turned them all down with a firm “Bu yao, xia xia.” No, thank you. The vendors and merchants almost never called me lao-wai until I had passed them. I wanted to find out what it meant. Lao-wai.
I walked through the pedestrian tunnel that led from the square to the other side of the gigantic streets that circled it. Circled the square. Everything was so god damn big here, even the geometry.
“Badaling, Badaling… Hey, you go Badaling?” The street hawkers were savvy to why a white person shows up at the bus station so early. The reason could only be to take a tour of the Great Wall. I didn’t really want to go to the Badaling section though, I had heard that Badaling had been completely rebuilt by the Chinese government. Simatai was the area that had been recommended to me. It was there that people got the experience of “walking the wild wall.”
“Bu yao, xia xia,” I told them “Simatai?” at which point they would generally walk away calling me lao-wai. Nobody at the bus station seemed to be going to Simatai. All the special tourist buses were going to Badaling. I might have guessed it would be like this. I’d asked one of the many English speaking art students where I should go to get a bus to the Great Wall. She brought me there and told me to come back in the early morning. I should of known she would point me to the section most tourists went to.
The buses left at 8 AM and I waited until 7:45 before resigning myself to seeing the “new” section of the wall. The important thing was to get to the wall and climb it. I had to do that if I wanted to be a hero. That was what the art student had told me. She explained that Chairman Mao had proclaimed that any person who wanted to be a hero, must climb the great wall. Every Chinese Emperor, Sun Yat Sen, and Chairman Mao himself had all climbed the wall.
And now, as soon as the tourist bus got me there, I would climb the wall too. I felt silly and serious thinking it. I would be a hero.
The bus finally filled up. Everyone on board was Chinese except for me and a European looking couple in stylish jackets with wolf fur lined hoods. I had on a beat up army coat…not very stylish at all.
I stared out the window as the bus took us from the city. It was an extremely quick transition from masses of humanity to rolling countryside hills and water filled fields. I was mesmerized looking to see how different everything was from the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
I heard the whispered exclamations of the Europeans several seats behind me. “Mon Dieu, C’est Fantastique…C’est tres belle!” The woman had a lovely voice made more so by the Parisian accent. I snuck a peek back at her. She was beautiful. I noticed the large diamond wedding ring on her hand wondering if I could have such a beautiful wife if I could afford such a giant gem.
An hour later, the bus made it’s first stop, Juyong Pass. One moment we were winding through green hills looking at farms and villages and the next we were pulling into a huge parking lot and seeing the serpentine architecture of the wall winding up and away in two directions. It was breathtaking. It seemed to go straight up and just kept going on and on as far as the eye could see.
The bus came to a stop and the woman who was conducting the Chinese tour showed me her watch. It was 9:15. Then she wrote on her hand 11:00 AM. “Ni dong?” You understand? She asked me. “Wo dong.” I felt like I had learned the right thirty or so words of Chinese…I just wanted to know the meaning of lao-wai.
I heard her going through the same routine with the French couple but decided to avoid the tourist formalities of introducing myself, finding out who they were, and exchanging the ‘where ya been, what ya dones?.’ It was a sort of expected thing that white people should meet each other in China because there weren’t too many of us. Overall it was an annoying custom to me, who hadn’t come to China to meet white people.
So I bounded out of the bus, bought the ticket that allowed me to climb the wall, and started up the huge stone steps. I had less than two hours to climb and come back down the wall and I didn’t want to waste any time. Ours had been the first bus of the day to get there so there was no one on the wall. I looked up and could see empty stairs all the way to the top. It was a long way.
Top was sort of a subjective term anyway because the wall went on for miles and depending upon which section you were on, the elevation varied quite a bit. I picked out the highest guard tower and made it my goal.
I would have to pass three other tower sections in order to reach it and I wondered if I would have the time. I figured an hour going up and that left forty-five minutes to get back down. Five minutes into the climb my leg muscles began to burn. The steps too were giant. Each one a minimum eighteen inches tall. Some of them were more than two feet tall and less than six inches wide. I developed a sidewise stepping action and began to zig-zag up the wall using a crablike motion.
Fifteen minutes after I began I reached the first guardhouse. It was only then I looked back down the immense number of stairs I had climbed. Others were climbing the wall now, they were far below me, but I could recognize the coats of the French couple steadily climbing. A fierce competitive streak burned in me and despite my already aching leg muscles I pushed on, focusing on the next landing, and then the next, and then the next…seeing the second tower getting closer with each series of steps completed. Refusing to look behind me for fear that someone was going to catch up with me and pass me.
Slightly more than thirty minutes had gone by when I reached the second tower. An armed guard boredly looked at me as I huffed and puffed past. I chanced a look down and saw that the Europeans and most of the Chinese had stopped at the first tower. They were sitting, taking pictures, and admiring the only man made artifact that can be seen with the naked eye from outer space, but from the ground.
A few figures trudged further up though; getting closer to me each moment I rested. I cut my break short and set off again.
The distance was shorter to the third tower, but the steps were steeper. My lungs gasped for air as my hands on my legs attempted to ease the frightful burning that occurred each time I lifted them for another huge step. I took frequent breaks during this section and noticed that some of the Chinese were catching up to me and the Europeans had started to climb again.
I pushed myself harder. For some reason I felt that I had to be the first to the top. It was as if I thought the wall would only allow the first person to climb it each day to achieve the hero status I so desired. I would be a hero. I would be the hero.
At the third tower I checked the time. Fifty minutes had gone by. I had fifty-five minutes to climb back down and make it to the bus. My tired body told me it was a good point to turn around. The view was stunning. The Great Wall of China stretching serpentine along hilltops for scores of miles. I snapped a photo of himself with the wall in the background.
I looked down the steps where two young Chinese men had nearly reached my resting point. They would keep going past me. They would pass me up. I had to keep going. The climb to the fourth tower seemed less steep than the last section had been but a little longer. The fourth tower was the highest I could see. If I reached that tower, I would be able to claim hero status. I had to go on. I looked down the steps again and saw the Frenchman nearing the third tower and his wife watching from the second.
I didn’t understand this competition I had placed myself in with the Frenchman, but I had to win. The other guy didn’t even know he was competing. Well, maybe he did. It felt like he was trying to get as far as me. I didn’t mind that, I just needed to be first.