Enjoy Your Memories, Live Twice!: Run Through 北京 (Northern Capital (Beijing))

It was a very quick trip, not so much in that it all went by fast but more so in that events followed up upon each other very quickly. Sure it didn’t last very long either, we touched down on Monday at 2pm and left on Friday at 12pm but with the amount of “things” that we ran through it seemed like I must have been gone for at least a month!

We practiced every day and we played a game against China every day. Playing water polo against China was definitely a very interesting experience. They were an extremely physical team, very bound on winning which they didn’t manage as we ended up pulling through around the third quarter of every game. However one can tell they are going to be a team you better not under estimate because if your concentration wavers; you lose.

The climax, literally and figuratively speaking, was the highest point of the Great Wall of China that we hiked up. This is Seriously not for the faint hearted, only 5 of us decided to pull through all the way to the end. And I must admit I twice thought of not going all the way, but you know, once almost there it would be a shame not to finish it off! I have now two very sore calves to remind me of the hike of a million stairs that all had a different height. We stopped at every tower between staircases: after the first couple to catch our breath and after every next couple to make sure our legs would still go on!

The forbidden City was pretty, but also very empty. Luckily I have a mind full of imagination filled by the text of a history book on the last empress of China which made the walk through it a lot more interesting! The houses were very pretty but no trees or plants or anything grew on the thickly stone paved floors put down there so no one could hide behind trees or dig tunnels into the forbidden city to harass anyone within its walls.

Walking through a great mall type of thing there was more you could buy then you could possibly imagine for less then you could possibly pull out of your ATM back home. At first excited by the prospect of haggling I was quite glad I ended up not buying anything after I came out. OF course it is only too easy to forget all the child labour going into these things but I guess that when I can be only a little help to avoiding it and being conscious of what I buy then I will.

Meanwhile we were dealing with a major jetlag with no real time to get over it in between all activities. We were not supposed to sleep on the bus but going through China traffic makes every place we wanted to go at least a sixty minute drive away. Guess what… yep! However, this meant that when you jolted to a stop or when our Chinese tour guide decided to tell us a story you magically appeared at certain locations with no conscious memory of the trip!

The Olympic pool was pretty impressive too and really interesting to see it with no one in there! It better be swarming with people at every game but somehow I’m pretty sure it will!

Even our tour guide got all excited and started taking pictures. On the way home she started cracking jokes (we laughed mostly at her excitedness about the punch lines and at her disappointment over us already knowing the answer to her final ground breaking joke which were all very appropriate jokes the worst one taking a stab at the stupidity of the Japanese!)

All in all a terrific trip in a little too short a time! And for the purpose of taking the bite out of out china experience, I’m not sure it did its job because I think it only made me want to run around there even more to experience the country and the culture. I only want to know more about the Chinese language and I only want to see more of the countryside. But That will have to be an episode in the life of memories of Meike. For now, 再見/Chè chè (thankyou) for reading! I will as usual update pictures soon (my camera broke so I have none to show for!)