Friday afternoon after our exams, the teachers took us out to a delicious restaurant. Then it was time to pack up and get ready for our trip to the Great Wall! While waiting in the Lobby I ran into my two buddies Hu Wei and Ren Yi. Both recently graduated from Capital Normal University. Hu Wei's major was philosophy and when I first met him was plowing through some Chinese poetry and a translation of Ernst Cassier. Ren Yi was a film studies major, and was reading some Laozi and Zhuangzi (two of China's greatest philosophers) when I met him. Anyway, this time the two of them were with a third friend listening to a recording of someone playing a traditional Chinese instrument called the Wuqin. Turns out the third guy (Liu somebody) was the guy they were listening too! Also, a philosophy major, he proceeded to have a half hour conversation with me comparing traditional Chinese music to American blues.
To tie up a surreal afternoon, I made buddies with a monk waiting for the elevator who lives on the 9th floor of my building. He had just graduated from CNU with a masters in something. Said we should hang out sometime.
Great Wall! The bus ride was torturously long and though we drived for several hours through the Chinese countryside we only went to the border of Beijing (the province), by Hebei. The countryside and road were like nothing I've ever seen. We stayed over night in a hostel at the foot of a leg of the Great Wall known as Si Ma Tai, arguably the most beautiful portion of the Wall. It is kind of remote and we started hiking at 3 in the morning, so we were alone on the Great Wall, pretty awesome. The night before I roomed with DSIC's only male teacher and staff member. The teacher, Qu Laoshi, and I really hit it off. During dinner, him and the truck driver and I talked about my bracelet, ghosts, Beijing, Chinese people in Jamaica, and the Great Wall. While watching some cartoons that night we chatted about China, Buddhism, cheap street food near CNU, relationships, and the pluses and minuses of not drinking the night before attempting a hard hike. He's from Northeat China, by the Chaoshan (North Korean) border and is of a Chinese ethnic minority which speaks a dialect of Korean. His home sounded nice (a place in China with water so clean you could drink it straight from the tap) and he invited me to come travel with him and his friends after the program through China's great Northeast, visit his parents, some some beautiful old historic sites, and return to Beijing.
Si Ma Tai is so beautiful. Words fail to describe what it feels like after climbing for hours up a milenia old wall on a steep mountain in the dark to come to the summit and gaze apon green hills as far as the eye can see and see the sun rise big and red over the horizon. The lakes, mountains, and trees as green as only could be possible in perhaps a dream. Dragonflies scurrying around in dawns first light. The place reminded me of my childhood trips to New Hampshire's White Mountains, ony here the trail was a wonder of the World. And the best thing about a 3:30am hike? No tourists but us, not one on the way up. Only one on the way down, and he was Chinese.
Two more weeks until our midterm trip. I originally signed up to go to Shandong and see Taishan and Kong Zi (Confucius)'s birthplace, but out of 80 students only I wanted to do that trip, so it was cancelled. Instead, I'm going to Datong in Shanxi which I've heard is beautiful . Monday night I'm meeting with a friend I met in the States who lives nearby.
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