We met in the morning at the bus station to catch the one bus out to the area of the mountains, so the taxi ride would not be so expensive. Thankfully, we had with us Mauricio, a Chilean medical student who has lived in Chaina for over a year and has a keen ability to pick up languages. As always, while standing around, we were continually hounded by people, chattering to us in Chinese, trying to sell us something. Mauricio suddenly started talking back to one. It is often difficult to know the tone of what is being said in Chinese, the language jumps up and down in odd ways. Simple things can take forever, large ideas can be summed up in few words. Friendly banter can sound angry. I was assuming that Mauricio was finding a long way to say "bugger off", especially by the tone, but then he turned to us and asked, "How 60 yuan sound for a ride there?" We thought carefully, weighing the ridiculously cheap bus price that would get us within 20
miles of the wall over the conveince of not having to transfer in a strange northern Beijing village. "I guess that sounds ok," one of us answered.
He told the man no deal and rejoined the bus queue; the eight of us followed. The man then chased him and the game was on. They went back and forth, mostly serious but half smiling. Bargaining is tough business, but also meant to have an element of fun. After a bit more chatting, Mauricio pitched the man's next offer, "He'll take us there and back for 50 yuan with four hours to hike." We seemed to agree this was ok, then left the bus queue with the man. "Mauricio, do you think we could get five hours to hike, I don't think four is enough for the section we are doing?" He thought about it, then pitched my suggestion to the man; he didn't seem to like this new agreement. "Let's go back to the bus then, he won't give us what we want."
The nine of us turned back and walked once again to the back of the giant bus queue. Within in a minute, the man was back at it. Watching the game was fascinating. Neither side could give away any weakness and none of us knew what the two of them were saying. The man wanted the sale; we didn't want to take the bus which would only allow us three hours at most to hike. Finally, Mauricio made a sleeping gesture, then chopped his hand across the air, the Chinese signal for no deal. So, it was the bus for us.
We were finally getting close once again to the bus, when the man came back with what must have been his final offer.
Mauricio translated, "45 yuan each way, five hours of hiking?"
"Lets do it!" I said.
Mauricio gave the thumbs up and we left the line and went with the man for good. The transaction to nearly 20 minutes.
"What did you tell him in the end?" I asked.
"He told me that if we go with him, he could get us there much faster than the bus, so I told him I was tired and needed extra time to sleep."
He's a clever guy that Chilean.
The driver was silent and calm as he weaved in and out of traffic, passed on the shoulder, ran red lights, cut off every vehicle smaller than his car for the whole 90 minute drive. Mauricio somehow was no longer tired, teaching Mila and I essential Chinese words. The smog and crowds faded into cornfields and out of the cornfield rose the mountains, steep and jagged. Soon we were at their base in a tiny village.
We all gather by a nut market as Mauricio discussed the plan with the driver. "He said it is a one hour walk to the wall, then we can hike for three hours and come back down to the village."
"What if we want to go further; someplace down the line?" I asked.
Mauricio asked the man and seemed quite annoyed that he'd have to drive to the next village, but agreed. He also explained that we'd need tickets down the line. Somehow, the driver had some sort of connection that would allow him to buy the tickets at a 10 yuan discount. This sounded like a good deal, so we coughed up 30 yuan each. This is the moment we lost the game. He smiled and pointed us on our way.
The trail shop immediately upward and continued this way for two hours. We had a list of turns to take at each fork, but we soon stopped looking; all trails led up. I was glad I spent months training for my upcoming Nepal hiking, because this was a real hike. We were all quite fit, but a young German girl was allergic to plants, so this slowed us down a bit. We all chugged our water in the hot Chinese humidity and we were getting worried that we'd had brought enough. We assumed there might be some energetic peddler selling beer and water at the top; there is no marketing niche left untouched in this country. The driver told us it would take one hour to reach the top and after two, we'd yet to reach the wall. If we had not seen the thin grey line slicing through the mountains' lush green trees, we might have thought the wall a myth. The German girl was slowly getting worse and worse as we pushed through the bush. Our stamina faded as we
realized a healthy heart has its limits. The water in our bottles were dwindling. Suddenly throught the thick foreign folliage, we saw brick. There before us was the Great Wall.
We ran to the top of the first crumbled tower and saw the spectacular views of the mountains to one side and the now tiny village we had departed on the other. The wall twisted and turned up and down the peaks of the mountains.
Half wanted to rest, but I and four others pushed on to a nearby tower higher up the mountain in the opposite direction of our destination. Walking along the wall proved much easier than the hike to it and it only took a few minutes to reach the distant tower. Up the next ridge was another tower. We hiked to the next one as well, and as expected, there was a tiny enterprising chinese man selling beer and water.
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