Having made a sizable deposit in my sleep bank, being unable to go back to sleep after 5:00 A.M. didn’t seem too great a hardship, though all things considered I would have preferred not hearing doors slamming all up and down my hall, together with American voices that made me think I must have missed my 6:30 wake-up call (I never did find out who the voices belonged to; no one in our group, apparently). The breakfast buffet downstairs, as in Taiwan, ranged from eggs and omelets to order and cereals to a wide offering of Chinese dishes such as congees, stir-fries, and fried breakfast bread.
A heavy mist was hanging over the heavy traffic beyond the dining room windows; by the time I went back to my room for a few minutes, I could see the first flakes of snow floating down. Back on our bus, we crept along with the rush-hour crush, on streets and then a ring road, fat ragged flakes pouring down. I’d joked with Jia, our guide, that we’d brought the snow; she’d just yesterday been telling us Beijing, like so many places this winter, had had hardly any snow, which is very unusual.
Beijing is just immense (20 million immense). It still was impossible to see it clearly, but in any direction it is obviously possible to drive for over an hour and still be in it, still passing densely-packed buildings. The snow was increasing, which as we drove through the Olympic park from 2008 was too bad; we could only dimly see the famous “Bird’s Nest” stadium and the solar-heated walls of the Water Cube aquatic stadium. I do vaguely remember reading at the time that a large part of the Chinese government’s expense for the Games was compensating all the people (to some degree) for their property cleared to construct the Olympic venues, which memory our guide confirmed. As in Russia, where shelters cover statues in winter, special covers protect garden beds, small hedges, and tall two-sided windbreaks even shelter taller shrubbery and small trees.
We stopped at a jade factory, which includes a gallery, shop, and background lecture on the history and properties of jade, as well as a glimpse through glass of a jade craftsman carving jade with diamond dust, the only natural substance harder (gem substance harder? ). Snow was still falling intermittently as we left there, and the wind was blowing. We drove on farther into the countryside, climbing. So by the time we reached the parking lot below the Great Wall, quite a bit of snow had accumulated at that elevation. Quite a bit, several inches (I can feel you cold weather haters recoiling, but I found it hilarious. I mean, what were the odds? Our guide pointed out that classic Chinese art often depicts the Wall exactly as we were getting to see it, in winter, with the mountains shrouded in mist.
The first modest flight of steps sounded the alarm, for what the weather conditions really meant. The snow on every step already had been compacted and polished by many feet to something like glass; just getting up these involved hanging onto the metal railing for dear life. And we weren’t really anywhere yet. So, here we are, a no doubt once in a lifetime event: what to do? Risk breaking an ankle (or worse), or miss what we’d come to see?
Right. You know what my answer was, don’t you. Step by step, inch by inch . . . down another steep flight of slick stone steps to a long gradual sort of ramp—no less slick, but more level, at least. The minutes passed, the breathtaking views unfolded (even limited by the fog, the snow made them spectacular, outlining the long vertical and horizontal stretches of ancient stone in sharp positive-negative). Those who persevered clung to rails, took tiny baby steps (I have photos! of lines of us ascending and descending desperately clutching them)—and I don’t mean just my group; Chinese, German, whoever. The rails on the inner side of the wall (outgoing, in other words, for us making our treacherous way) unfortunately were extremely low, so as (presumably) not to be higher than the stone wall itself. At the level of various beacon platforms the rail would stop for a stretch.
And I kept climbing, and climbing, stopping only occasionally when my heart was going like a jackhammer. The steps were far from regular; there would at random intervals be one of double height (our guide later said this was deliberate, to thwart any breach in the dark by invaders, who would not know the Wall. I was puzzled, since this would mean they’d already gotten inside the Wall, but maybe it’s true). Finally there was only me. The higher I went, the easier the going, actually, since very few other feet had been there to compact the snow. It was still fresh and crunchy. It was also falling hard by then, the big flakes from the outset replaced by small ones falling in a heavy windblown shower.
Coming down, predictably, was vastly more terrifying than going up. Looking back down at the way I’d come (have photo!), it was wistfully tempting to just stay put until the snow melted. The little snack stand for sunnier times wouldn’t have provided much shelter (at that point, though, I was sweating inside the thermal underwear, down jacket, and double-thickness mittens). So, developing a process of holding the rail tightly behind my back with both hands, so that I could dig one heel into the uncrushed snow right up under it, step by cautious, slow step, I went down. There were many occasions when I could feel a foot slide when a step was just too slippery; only a tight grip and focusing absolutely on each step, trying to put my feet down strategically where it seemed there was the least compaction got me down. Yes, I know you think I’m insane (know you know I’m insane). It was exhilarating. It was beautiful. It was a sort of meditation. It was amazing. The only time I fell was back on the long gradual ramp near the end, where I Could Not keep my feet no matter what strategy. By the end, as you can imagine, I was exhibiting symptoms of a Jelly-Leg Jinx (it’s a Harry Potter thing), and my arms of course were aching.
So we reboarded our bus and headed back toward Beijing. About halfway in, we stopped at a little plain building tucked against the mountain in a curve of the highway for lunch: a Mongolian hot pot. Our guide had pre-briefed us on the procedure as we were driving, so we sort of knew what we were supposed to do. First a quick bathroom/handwashing break (I won’t rant at you—much—about American women and their obsessive avoidance of the squat toilets. I mean, what is the huge deal?? Here, though, our guide told us, Gate 1 has enough economic clout in China that the owners had put in one Western-style one in order to get the business; they refer to it as the “Gate 1 toilet.”)
Then to the two rooms set up for our lunch. We sat around big round tables, the usual lazy Susan in the center. But at each place there was a pot of boiling broth. We were provided a plate of thinly sliced goose, black fungus, bean curd, an egg, and assorted noodles and vegetables to cook in the broth, remove, and eat. The only real advice had been that the sweet potato noodles take a long time to cook, so we should probably add them to the broth first. It was great fun, messy, and tasty.
Because we weren’t exhausted, sleep-deprived, and full then, we drove next to the valley of the Ming Tombs. It really is a whole valley, exclusively devoted in its time to royal burials, off-limits to all others. Feng shui demands as an ideal burial site water before, a mountain behind, and this valley had that—a lake, and of course mountains. There’s much more—the conquering emperor who established the practice, the burial sites, the beautiful ancient trees in the snow, the open museum, the low tower to, yes, climb (and the four twenty-something guys were racing each other to the top. Disgusting.) for a view over more of the park.
From that area it was a short drive to the Sacred Way, the road along which the funeral processions passed. We had only to walk another mile along this stone path lined with bare willow trees and huge statues (making our way in the opposite direction from that the processions would have gone), to a massive square building (not wide, but tall and very—thick, in the sense that the Arc de Triomphe is massive, though not that huge), set in the midst of another grand square, inside which was a tall tablet carried on the back of a bronze tortoise—which the Chinese believed carried the world itself on its back. Legend has it that you stroke the tortoise’s back if you want great wealth; its head if you want long life. Interestingly, I didn’t see anyone pet its back.
Finally back in Beijing through what was getting to be rush-hour traffic again, we had about an hour to get minimally freshened up for our Peking duck dinner. Having discovered the evening before that the hotel’s water was sufficiently hot and the tub sufficiently long to create a hot tub experience—so hot I would venture to compare it to natural hot springs, minus the minerals—I quickly recreated that; I don’t think there was a part of my body that didn’t need it, ankles to wrists and everything between. The most painful aftereffects, which would last for days, were in the front of my thighs, so that I could still climb without much problem, but going down was excruciating.
As dolled-up as my wardrobe would permit, which wasn’t much (I hadn’t packed even one skirt, but I did switch from jeans to slacks), I met the others who were going to the dinner in the lobby. Let me backtrack to mention the little trees in the median all through downtown Beijing, covered with pink blossoms, that I’d first seen driving in from the airport. I’d first thought, oh, a sign of spring—were they cherries? crabapples? only to realize on closer examination they were fake, and thought, how sad, the pollution is so bad they have fake trees. Well, by night their fakeness explains itself: all the little pink blossoms are lights, and every tree blooms in dazzling pink. In addition to the primarily blue and white lights wrapping other, real trees that are bare at the moment. To the tall building that finally induced me to interrupt our guide as she was in mid-instruction for the dinner, to ask what building that was, so ablaze with colored and running lights that it looked like fireworks (everyone was wondering; I just asked). It was the international apartment building, very exclusive and expensive, that she’d pointed out by day, but unrecognizable now.
At the restaurant we climbed (!) the stairs to the lovely dining room set up for us. There’d been some preview on the bus of how the dinner would proceed, its historical context (originally a meal exclusively for royalty, later introduced to the public by the emperor’s former chef in one fancy restaurant, and now available generally, though it still follows, in its purest form, a set protocol), what to do—but most memorably, frankly, the uses and proper consumption of fire water (not “firewater,” not “Firewhiskey,” but the very potent liquor distilled from sorghum). It is drunk from tiny stemmed glasses, a little smaller than a shot glass, but downed in one gulp like a shot of—something. Since there is a lazy Susan in the center of each table, and it is not possible to clink glasses together as in a Western toast, everyone taps their glasses against the lazy Susan to signal their agreement to the toast, and then—bottoms up. This began before the first of the food arrived, so, reluctant to begin on a completely empty stomach, I was frantically nibbling at the little slivers of cucumber and onion there by my place for the duck. The firewater is good, actually, reminiscent of vodka, but with a sweeter, slightly smoky taste. It burns just a little going down, but does certainly warm one up.
The first sustenance to arrive was, naturally, the duck—whole, the size a 60-day-old duckling could be, crispy and brown. The chef’s prowess is verified not just in the preparation, but in the ability to produce 108 slices from one duck (I have no idea; it was not possible to count). The main waiter for our table demonstrated for each of us how to take a small “pancake” (more like very fine crêpe) from a stack, dip a bit of duck in plum sauce, spread the sauce around on the pancake, add a little of the cucumber and onion, and roll the whole thing up like a tiny burrito. It was, not surprisingly, delicious, as moist—and a little sweet—and crisp as I’d always heard. There was a whole array of other dishes as well, with the duck (plate after plate of duck) as a centerpiece. And wine. And chrysanthemum tea. And—fire water. After two I meant to stop, but well into the meal, the mainly male table (it’s unclear how our tables had segregated so by gender—it never really would happen again, and there were a couple of wives at that other one, though “the boys,” as they came to be known, were by default a majority) was ostentatiously banging glasses down. Not to be outdone, we banged down our own (this leads to a certain amount of sloshing, by the way). Vowing that was really it, I ignored the next refill immediately provided. Still, it required a real effort to appear lucid in responding to email back at the hotel. And I was nowhere near the seven shots I later learned (some of) that other table had downed.
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