So after my day in Shanghai I got on a plane to Beijing, but not before oversleeping and almost missing my group (I made it though, thank god). But nevertheless, made it to Beijing Capital Airport, and got on a bus driving 75 miles away to Gubei Water Town. Now I can only describe Gubei Water Town as the Williamsburg, Virginia of China. The entire town is creation of what a village would have looked like several hundred years ago, along with a 5 star resort hotel sitting right outside the town walls. We get a tour of the town, and much like Williamsburg, Virginia, we see a very generalised, glossy version of what actually was. This fact, I feel, plays very much into the show that both China and the United States play for the world, in a scary effort to wash away the harshness and cruelty of reality. With that the censorship of media in China made my down time very strange. Everyone, both in my group of Semester at Sea students and people we ran into had VPNs to access social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, and not being able to talk about certain topics in in a public setting (will come back to this).
Hiking began the day after we arrived, bright and early around 7:30/8 am. I was not ready for the beginning of this hike. We start by scaling this hill, which turned into a mountain, with only a chain and fence posts to pull my cold, sniffly (it was windy), body up onto this mountain ridge. The mountain ridge eventually turns into some semblance of a ruined Great Wall, and the incline isn't too bad and I'm hiking along, having a great time - and then we hit a Chinese Military Base. Why is there a military base on the Great Wall of China, in a rural, inland area? I have no idea. But to get around this we hike down into this snow covered ravine, through an extremely isolated rural village, and then back up the ravine - all before lunch. Hungry and tired as all hell, I trekked back up this mountain in my neon orange sneakers that had no traction (thought I was gonna slip down the ravine, never to be found) to our lunch spot. We finish our hike shortly after, hitting a solid 12 mile mark when you include our diversion off the wall and then back onto it.
Day 2 of our hike started just about where we had left off, and although it was a reconstructed part of the wall, the inclines, subsequent stairs and slopes were actually comical. Like the stairs went up to my knees, so I was actively doing lunges up the mountain ridge for a solid 5 hours. But, like, honestly it was beyond worth it. We completed our two day hike at 24 (general consensus because our tour leader wouldn't tell us how long the hikes were) miles.
We got back on the bus to see Beijing, China's capital, to round out our experience and see more than just Chinese wilderness for a week. Given the night off and staying in the same hotel as the other Semester at Sea groups, my friends and I got to talk about our experiences and see some Beijing nightlife (although I was actually dead after the hiking I had to rally). It was interesting to see the amount of American brands and fast food, because it almost could've been mistaken for an American city, if not for the obvious language difference. The next day was our one-day, full-day, highlights of Beijing bus tour. Hitting all the stops like Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Olympic Park, and Temple of Heaven. With all of these big sights, we were warned profusely by our tour leader to not mention 1989 while in Tiananmen Square, not to say anything against the government in any capacity, and that the extremely strong military presence was not just there for show - and not to point your camera at them. Scared of any and all consequences, I complied, got my selfie with Mao's portrait and carried on my merry way through the Forbidden City and taking in the hundreds of years of history. As we moved from place to place, I found past history lessons coming back into my memory, and how I was actually in the places that integral historical events occurred (this, I would find, would become a common feeling). After our city tour, we had our last Peking Duck dinner and got ready to fly back to Shanghai the next morning.
China was an enigmatic experience for me, because I both thoroughly enjoyed my time there and the people I met, while at the same time could feel a looming, ever-present military government that scared me. I don't tend to get scared too often, but a combination of my understanding of current events, the building tensions because of Trump, and not having the ability to understand the language while visibly standing out; put me in a situation that made me uncomfortable, yet allowed me to grow into something newer and bigger than what I had allocated for myself. Returning to the ship was a sanctuary of familiarity, but also let me reflect on the events and experiences that had occurred the week prior, and then, within 3 days I was in another contrasting culture, Vietnam.
Talk to you later,
-Karin xx
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