Beijing Day 2

June 23, 2024

Today was so cool. It started off with me waking up way earlier than I was supposed to. I couldn’t sleep very well for some reason. After I got ready and stuff, the Irish and Persian guys and I all had waffles and fruit for breakfast. The lady who runs the hostel is SUPER nice and she makes really good food. We got to know each other and were talking about what we each were going to do today.

Earlier that morning, one of the women who is in charge of the hostel sat down with me and gave me a suggestion of what to do that day (all in Chinese by the way). It consisted of a 6 hour walk starting at a nearby gate and ending at a place called Jin Shan Ling. She said the view was great and it would lead me into a town that I could hail a taxi back to the hostel from. Perfect. That was my plan. I asked her what the guys should do and she said since they were leaving today they had to do a shorter route and showed me that way as well.

Fast forward to breakfast, I was telling them what the lady had suggested, and after translating back and forth (extremely proud moment for me here) they had gotten their plan sorted.

I was fully prepared to do this journey on my own, but actually the lady who runs the hostel asked if she could join because she had never done the route I was going to and wanted to come along. Of course! I was glad to have her, and in fact she helped me so many times.

Around 9am we headed off for the trek and walked up the mountain that would connect to the Great Wall. Not going to lie, this was NOT a nice or safe journey. There was barely a trail most of the times and surprisingly you’d think the great wall would be a wall with walls, but you could’ve easily fallen off the side of the mountain. I thought I was being clever by visiting the non populous parts of the wall. Sure, it was peaceful, but at the same time because very few people walk it, there’s no need to renovate it. APPARENTLY, parts of the wall had never been fixed since it was constructed (according to the lady) it’s as old as the Ming Dynasty. I thought that was quite cool. To be touching something so old, having lived through so much.

After scaling the first mountain, there was a mishap and the lady and I actually did end up getting lost. We took a wrong path and that set us back probably half an hour, 45 minutes? This was the first out of 3 times getting lost for us.

We passed by a bunch of old towers including but not limited to the Good Hope Tower and the 24 Eye Watch Tower. Once we got to the 24 Eye Watch Tower, we couldn’t continue on the wall much longer. This was because it was part of a Chinese military zone, so we actually had to take an offshore route. This is where we got lost for the second time, and we ended up climbing up the cliffside of the mountain and it was probably one of the scarier parts of the hike. Luckily we realized we better turn away and after watching several TikTok’s, we found our way out. There were also trail markings that we failed to pay attention to. Good to know.

That path led us off the mountain and into this store that was in front of Xi Men (West Gate). There we topped off on our drinks, I tried this new Chinese orange soda that was pretty good, and then we set off for the mountain again. At this time it was about 2:30, so a good 5.5 hours into our 6 hour hike. Cool! Not too off track right? Even better, the lady at the store said if we hiked the mountain we could get to Jin Shan Ling in an hour. Great news, especially after feeling like we didn’t know what we were doing for the whole time.

We start on the hike and everything seems pretty seamless. The views are nice and the path is clear with clear signs, one even saying (Gubeikou (where we started) -> Jin Shan Ling (our destination)). You think following where that sign pointed would be the answer right? Wrong. We followed it, and it led us down the mountain, but this time into a deserted or old bed and breakfast. The first time around, no one was there however there were fresh crops nearby so it wasn’t DESERTED deserted. We end up following the road until a guy on a motor bike comes, so naturally the lady asks for help (thank goodness she was there because I could not have managed this with my language level).

Long story short, she asked where we needed to go for Jin Shan Ling, and the guy said the quickest route was up the mountain. Hell no. I did not want to climb up the mountain AGAIN and there wasn’t even a clear path to begin with. Our other option was to walk the road for 3 hours, which in hindsight is what we should have done, but up the mountain we went.

Back at the old hotel we saw when we got there, I saw through a window that there was a man sitting. I told the lady and we went to him for a second opinion. The man apparently lived there and we called him Da Ge. He told us how to get back up the mountain, to which we attempted, said it was too hard, and then came back down to ask if he was sure, to which he replied yes. Ugh. So we went back up for a second time, walking in unclear terrain, and finally made it back to the top. We then followed some trail markers that led us to a bridge leading to the side of the wall.

After probably what seemed like an hour we finally got back on route and continued to follow it. We finally were able to find a stop with tons of signs and you’d never believe it but this was exactly where we got lost in the first place. At this point there are three routes we can take: 1) The same route we got lost on, 2) some random route going up the mountain, 3) the trail we used to get here from the shop we were at. Guess which route we took. I’ll give you a hint, it wasn’t the one that made the most common sense (AKA 3). It wasn’t even the one that made no common sense (AKA 2). It was the one that was the exact idiot thing to do (AKA the path that led us to the old hotel).

However, IN MY DEFENSE, in this situation I did tell the lady that that was the wrong place to go but she was convinced. Finally after letting her walk enough and pointing out the building from the mountains, I convinced her to turn around and we were on our merry way. On the way back we met some people farming which gave me a lot of perspective. I didn’t realize crops grew alongside the Great Wall and I was equally as shocked to hear they had to hike so long every day they worked.

Now the plan was to get down to the store, ask the lady who ran it to take us home (because she had a car) because taxis are extremely hard to find in this area. Like DiDi (Chinese version of Uber) didn’t even work. However, just our luck, as soon as we FINALLY got back to civilization, the lady who ran the store had left and we were yet again stuck. At this point in time it was 5pm (a whole 3 hours after). Luckily for me, the lady knew people in the town who could help, so she called (a different) Da Ge. He came to the rescue quite promptly and oh my goodness this man was delightful.

The way Da Ge and the lady interacted was just so happy and joyful. We all talked and told him what had happened. During our conversation, we ended up reaching the topic on how I was mixed and I said something about being mixed but identifying more as an American (because of how I grew up) and how I was learning Mandarin partially to get closer to my Chinese heritage. His reply that my Chinese was very good and that I 算 (still count) as a Chinese person, which honestly really warmed my heart. It was a kind of reassurance I never knew I needed to hear. Being in China, I subconsciously feel like an outsider. I mean it’s hard not to when everyone is going up to you, shouting hello wherever you walk, pointing at you yelling “foreigner, foreigner”, or even having kids follow you who are shouting “all foreigners should die”. These are obviously the more extreme cases of what I’ve experienced on this trip and not at all the totality of my said experience, but my point is, it’s easy to feel different when you especially look different. His validation was just super nice to hear and the impression it left on me was so unexpected, it just made me think about my identity and stuff more. I think the fact that he was quite a bit older too, it meant a lot because usually older people hold more traditional values, so to be accepted by him, and for him to actually understand my speaking Chinese was a huge milestone for me.

Anyways, getting back was fairly easy. We drove through the town we missed and we also had to pass a police checkpoint which was a bit scary because they asked for my passport (thankfully I had it) and as they took, Da Ge just drove off. I was like WAIT my passport! Turns out he knew, he actually had to park and they had to manually check my passport. Da Ge went to go collect it, but they needed my phone number so he waved me over. This part was really cool too. The officers were trying to ask for my information, but they didn’t speak much English, so I answered everything in Chinese. I LIVE for theses moments. Although they seem very very minimal and basic and small, any situation I’m in where I can see my Chinese being understood and useful just makes me so happy. I never really knew when I would be at the point where my Chinese literacy is good enough to use in real life situations, and this trip is full of reassuring me that my skill level is at least good enough.

I feel like the need for this type of reassurance stems from the immense imposter syndrome I got at WashU. Even though I was managing the class, I felt like I wasn’t the same as the other actual college students learning the language. I always wondered if the grades I got were because I earned it or because the teacher was just being nice, so having these real life experiences really seem to help my self esteem (maybe a little too much haha).

Finally we reached home and to my surprise the other two travelers (who were supposed to leave before I got back) were sitting on the patio chilling with beer and tea. We sat down for an hour before they left chatting, getting to know each other more. They were really cool to talk to! I learned a lot about traveling. Scott, the Irishman (ironic right), told me about a place in Vietnam where you go on motor bikes and ride from homestay to homestay. That’s on my bucket list now. Ali, from Iran, told me about what it’s like there and how the linguistics of Farsi compared to English. It was a really enjoyable conversation, and I’m glad to have met them. We exchanged contact info and are planning to meet again in Beijing’s city!

While we were chatting, the lady made me dumplings and eggplant which was SO good, but also SO much. The guys ended up leaving, and I ended up asking to save the left overs for tomorrow’s breakfast.

Anyways, that’s pretty much what happened today. I am definitely very tired, but happy to have had this experience. Even though some of the parts were quite disastrous, it was an amazing opportunity to exercise and use my Chinese. Seriously! 8 whole hours full of nothing but speaking Chinese (aside from the silent moments). It was awesome!