Great.

I really like dried apricots.
This post is about the Great Wall.
A few days ago, I traveled there. I bought dried apricots, and they are tasty.
[edit: I started this post yesterday and have since finished all of the apricots. I am sad.]

The wall itself was amazing. Breathtaking. It really cannot be describe in words.
Scratch that, were that true, my writing this and your subsequent read of it would be wastes of time. It can be described, albeit poorly, in words.

Mao’s famous quote about no Chinese man being a man until he has visited the Great Wall may be stretching it (we all know how I feel about gender related heteronormative generalizations), but something definitely resonates when you get up there. It is a truly amazing, mammoth construction. As far as you can see along the mountainsides, the wall continues. And the view. Amazing. The Great Wall is about an hour and a half outside of Beijing but it seems like much longer. The landscape is still very wild and peaks recede into the distance as far as you can see. After living on an island for so long (the panorama of my hikes on oahu concluding in endless cerulean blue) it was really powerful to see such a gorgeous untamed mountain landscape. The wall is also outside of the grey woolen bowler hat (which is how I have decided to henceforth describe Beijing’s smog, GWBH anyone?) and the air is crisp, clear, clean. Parts of the mountain side could be the Pali. Parts could be up Chantry. Parts could definitely be out near Rock Creek. (I think I hit up all the hoods I’m beholden to, with those three wilderness references). It’s pretty fucking awesome.

All in all, honestly, I really wasn’t that stoked on going. I had images of tourists and touristy things on some wall that thousands died to erect. And we all know how Jessie feels about touristy attractions. She loathes them. I envisioned one more marker of mankind’s desire to draw a line in the sand between what is ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ (which, honestly, it was, it was held more of tangible impact than I imagined). Plus I had heard there was a Starbucks, and that I think would have been too much for me to bear (there wasn‘t one, thankfully).

There was, however, a slide. A huge sheet metal slide that you can take from the top down to the bottom. Now that, that was awesome.

Now go look at it, over on my flickr (cause I hate uploading to blogger)
Flickr.com/sinksync

Love&luz