Day 2

In a city where pollution is visible in front of you, sprinting with an open mouth traps more dust and grime in your throat than walking. This helps to make running a half mile to miss your train to the Great Wall of China even more unpleasant than it would be otherwise.

After getting a late start once I had turned in a seminar paper this morning, I was well ahead of schedule for making the 3:24 train to Badaling from Beijing to see the Wall. But wait! This seems inconsistent with the wind sprint and missed train referenced above, doesn’t it? Just wait.

I had my ticket in hand a full 50 minutes before the train was set to depart, but had barely eaten anything all day. I walked for a while, looking for something that didn’t look super grungy, but all the stores along the side of the road were empty and looked a little subpar. Across the highway however, were some upstanding looking places. I considered the 40+ minutes I had left, and decided to go ahead and cross the giant bridge across the highway. This led to its own little delay because of some awkwardly placed fencing preventing people from the sidewalk from getting to the restaurants. Once I had navigated my way over a low part of the semi-barbed wire and brushed past some bushes, I got to a building with some pictures of food in the window but nothing really visible on the first floor. It seemed like a slam dunk, not too grungy (at least it had two floors), but probably not too nice (the façade of the building was pretty run down), and it definitely had food.

When I got up there, the sound of trickling water and soft orchestral music told me I had guessed wrong. After finding out that they were in fact open, despite the many empty, white tablecloth’d tables. I took a seat and was left momentarily as the hostess sought out someone who could speak some English. They brought out someone who definitely didn’t speak English (at least not to me) and an ipad with their menu. The prices seemed kind of steep for the first couple pages of items, and then were extremely steep as the items got less appealing. I passed up the pig feet and donkey meat in favor of some fish with wine sauce from the first page. She asked me if that was all and went away. With about 30 minutes on the clock I checked the train schedule for a plan B. With the next train not until 5:30, the plan B was make my train, and walk out of this nice place if I had to. I tried to find out how long the fish would take with a combination of struggling chinese and the bilingual dictionary app on my phone, but couldn’t get an answer.

After about 5 or 6 minutes, they brought out my food. It was about 3 ounces of smoked fish that was really hard. I was less than thrilled, but gave it the benefit of the doubt and started pulling off the skin and eating it. Not only was it not very good at all, but the people working there were probably laughing at me because you aren’t supposed to eat that on its own (although I didn’t see bagels and cream cheese on the menu).

When they got over the awkwardness, they came over and suggested I order noodles or something. I ordered the noodles they pointed to on the ipad, with 20 minutes to go. I decided that 10 minutes until the train departure was the absolute latest I would leave, and proceeded to peel the skin off the rest of the fish for putting in the noodles. The noodles came five minutes later (though it felt like 25) and I was reassured that this really was a nice restaurant. With five minutes to eat all of this, I started shoveling noodles out of the soupish stuff onto an extra plate on the table to let them cool off. Then, I ate it all as quickly as I could and went to the hostess to pay. I put the sum of the prices of the food I had bought on the table, said “zai jen” and started to leave. She motioned for me to stay (12 minutes left by the way) and she called over the other lady. This woman pointed to a number that was more than I should have been paying, but I put down the money and walked out.

I then proceeded to sprint to the train, and do the walk that had taken probably 15 minutes in under 5. I run into the building where the trains depart, only to find a brief security check. I go through it and still have 4 or 5 minutes left until the train leaves. I go up to the woman letting people onto the platform, show her my ticket, and she tells me they “closed the track.” Well then what track should I go to, I ask. No, she explains, they close the track 5 minutes before it departs and I can’t go through. I explain to her that I am trying to go see the great wall and she explains to me that I can catch the next train. I get frustrated and start asking the same questions again until I give up in a humph and sit down. The next train leaves at 5:45 and won’t arrive until around 7, when it will be the dark wall of china. I figured I’d still be able to walk up on it at night. I figured wrong.

After sitting in a huff for 2 hours, I relocate my huffing to the train for another hour and a half. It is very dark outside when I arrive. It is also extremely cold and there is no one outside. I had arrived in the hills, where the great wall definitely was, but I couldn’t see it from outside the train station. I try walking up the hill towards where the guy in the station pointed for it, but there is very steep incline and a highway in my way. I tried walking along what looked like a path, but that proved unsuccessful when it ended abruptly and got very dark as I got farther from the train station. I didn’t have a flashlight. Mostly because no one goes to the Great Wall at night. After walking around a little more and getting thoroughly spooked after going into the building they give tours in, I headed back to the train station. I’ll save the pleasure of actually seeing the wall for my next trip to Beijing.