China’s Wall of Greatness

According to Wikipedia, there are seven wonders in this world. I’m not sure who possesses the authority to stake that claim, but there it stands nonetheless. The Great Wall of China undeniably made the cut; after all it does have “Great” with a capital “G” directly inserted into its ostentatious name.

If you can’t already tell by my tone of voice, I was skeptical. No, I am not trying to pull a fast one on you guys by substituting “The Great Wall of China” in for the word “Parthenon” with my previous The Pretentious Parthenon blog post, albeit the attitude was not dissimilar as we sightsaw around Greece.

What can I say? My eyes have an exceptionally voracious appetite. You know how people are always saying: “Feast your eyes!” when they show you something marvelous?  Well, frankly, my eyes do not feast. Actually, maybe they do feast, but more accurately, are never satisfied.  In plain English: I’m not one for sightseeing. Which is a major problem because sightseeing has been a main objective throughout this entire trip. I don’t know if I was always this way though, because we used to hike a lot at home and I always thought that was fun. Now that I think about it: this trip has totally spoiled my eyes! My eyes have sampled holy lobster rolls from the Mattapoisett Oxford Creamery, and now just roll their eyes (pun intended) whenever you say, “We’re going to go down to the xyz restaurant and get some lobster rolls.” Yeah, a great view is great and all, but unless it’s the Santorini Caldera, Sagrada Familia, or a couple of baby cheetahs, you can count my eyes out.

In addition to my eyes being picky about what they “feast upon,” they also tend to rest on their laurels. In other words: they like the lobster rolls at Oxford Creamery, and why would they mess with a good thing? Why try the lobster rolls at the other restaurant two blocks down the street? My eyes are content and aren’t exactly eager to try anything new any time soon.

Hey. No judgment: they like what they like. Fortunately, for my persnickety eyes, they don’t get to choose what goes into their mouth and what doesn’t; my parents do that. Unlike my eyes, my parents’ eyes want to try every lobster roll restaurant the world has to offer, so there wasn’t really ever a debate when it came to going to see The Great Wall.

I didn’t believe the hype. Pictures from countless tourist flyers and posters cluttered my mind with scenes of a big stretch of wall, shoulder-to-shoulder dense with hordes of people and a ridiculous multitude of tour buses. This is what my mind was preparing itself for as we drove to the hotel.

We rolled into The Great Wall Box House late in the afternoon. I really needed to take a pee. Our driver from Beijing to The Great Wall Box House didn’t speak any English, and since I wasn’t really up for playing “I really need to go to the bathroom” charades with him, I painfully endured two straight hours as my bladder quivered on the brink of explosion. Because I ran straight for the bathroom like a maniac, my eyes didn’t get a chance to behold the meal they would soon be “feasting upon.”

At first glance, it was greater than I ever imagined: long stretch of ancient, rugged, crumbling path with a great heap of worn stone that resembled a watchtower here and there. It was magnificently peaceful. Nobody was in sight and no tour buses were idling out front. It was just us, the Box House, the quaint town of Gubeikou and these mystic hills that cradled amazing, antique pathways and bits of historically mind-blowing stone.

We reluctantly rolled out of bed for sunrise the next morning. As we climbed a brisk and relatively steep hill, the main attraction came into view. A methodically winding wall, lit up with a golden hue by the first rays of dawn, slowly awoke, like a drowsy serpent regaining consciousness after an eternal slumber. There it lay, waiting for us, the first to greet on this fine day; for as far as the eye could see, not a single person was in sight. The wall seemed to beckon to us that humbling morning. It seemed to be enticing me to trek onwards, and to discover the secrets that lay deeply imbedded in every ancient crack, hole, and crumb of stone. “The things I have seen and the adventures I have witnessed are beyond belief.” It said. I took one step forward. One foot lifted from familiar weather-beaten dirt and landed on ageless, everlasting stone. I envisioned the feet that had been here, in this same situation, before mine, the people who had took this step ages ago. Maniacal Huns storming Chinese forces?  Chinese soldiers hastily preparing for war?  Maybe. A swift messenger who brought vital warnings of a Hun invasion at least.

My imagination had a field day with those thoughts, and my eyes, they just stood there: awestruck by the taste of the lobster roll they just put into their mouth.