Lest anyone think that our lives here are full of constant adventure, please keep in mind that all the recent posts and the next several to follow are from our month-long break in january and february when becca and susan came to visit us and we did some traveling. here are some photos of our day trip to the great wall. It was a perfect day to go, a rare almost warm day in early February, cool enough to hike comfortably and almost no one else there.
There are a lot of different sections of the wall you can get to from beijing. we got as far as we could by city bus and were let off at the side of the road. getting travelers to the wall is the way some people make their money, so anytime we've gone there are always people at key transfer points trying to hustle you into a waiting taxi or minivan. they will always tell you there is no public transport available and try to charge you exorbitant fees. A nice woman was talking to us on the bus but we started to see that she probably was working with some other people and trying to get us to go with them. It gets difficult when the people who actually do work on the bus are in with the scammers and you don't know if you're getting correct information. It's never a question of safety, just of being taken advantage of. So as usual our guard was up, and we were wary to trust anyone. After getting off the bus (the nice woman did in fact get off with us) there were several cab drivers along the road who tried to get us to go with them. One thing that i can't get used to about China is the pressure when you're trying to make a decision. When people are trying to make money it seems they won't listen to you, and can't understand why you would possibly need a few minutes to talk amongst yourselves first to decide. My favorite phrase for this situation is "Fang xin ba!" a nice enough way to tell someone to relax. Aaron's language skills came in very handy though-- after 15 minutes of talking, bargaining, and eventually joking with the drivers we had a reasonable price to take a cab the rest of the way. Things at times had seemed a bit tense, but when we were finally in the car our driver was a really nice guy and he had really taken to aaron. when we finally said goodbye he held aaron's hand for a little longer than you could get away with in the west, but in china is completely normal among friends.
