May 18th: China's Great Wall

We just got up and went. We all loaded onto a bus and went off to one of the 8 Wonders of the Known Universe: China’s Great Wall. It was about an hour bus ride there and 3 hours back because of traffic. On the way there, we drove past the new Olympic stadium, or where they’re building it. It’s huge and really nice to look at. On the way, Victoria told us some about the Wall and a couple of stories having to do with the Wall. Victoria is one of two students from the college here to help us out. She speaks really good English, but she’s a terrible storyteller. Hence the absence in this post of the two stories she told. (Or, am I leaving them out because I’m too lazy to just write about them in? The first. Know why I’m not lazy? Because I’m taking the time to write this explanation of why I’m not writing the stories. Ha! I’m not lazy at all. Well, sort of. I’ll keep going now.)

Victoria explained that we’re going to a section of the Wall that is the most popular. Judging by the pictures, you can see that she meant ‘popular’ very literally. Plus, talk about perfect competition. I would be exhaggerating to say that there were hundreds of people selling stuff, and it was all the same stuff. The thing is that there is no equilibrium price because you could haggle anything, which I will talk about a little later. Rick was telling us that we were going up the side that’s not so steep, but it was jammed packed with people. I tried to be very clear that I support him and his authority and didn’t want to undermine him or go over his head, and that in spite of that I would not be joining them on the crowded side. A few others felt the same way, and we went up the steep side.

Steep here means that you walk with your body at a 45 degree angle to the Wall in some places. I felt like pulling out my climbing harness and gear, clipping in and making the climb that way. I would’ve looked really silly, but at least I wouldn’t have brought all that gear for nothing. I felt like a wuss as I had such a hard time scaling that thing, yet old grandmas were running up and down it chasing after tourists, yelling “Hallo! Hallo! Vewy chee foh you! Hallo!” But after 2 years of chasing people down trying to get them to listen to me, the table were turned and I knew exactly what to do. You say “You’re very hard working,” or you just keep walking pretending you don’t here what they have to say. I was thinking about how maybe I should’ve been that aggressive and bold in Taiwan, running after people and grabbing onto their arms and shoving a Book of Mormon in their face. But I don’t want to give my testimony to someone who doesn’t want it. What am I going to do? Haggle the amount of commandments the person has to keep down to get them to want to be baptized? Of course, we would ask people for their time and these people on the Wall were asking for our money, and time is money. Anyway, I’m done talking about that.

We went all the way to the end of the section they had repaired and redone for tourists. All in all, it was very cool to see. I’m very glad I went depite the crowds. I still don’t know, though, which number wonder The Great Wall of China is. That was the first wonder that I’ve been to, so I guess it should be #1.