Starting the day
After a late night, I was now scheduled to meet the tour guide at 8:30, so I meandered down at 7:40 to check out the hotel breakfast buffet. It was an amalgam of cultural breakfast foods, from Western bacon, toast, and sausages to Chinese breakfast items like dim sum and congee, but also Chinese dinner items like black pepper beef…even baked beans in case an Irish person shows up. I tried to stick with things I’ve never had before, but I’m pretty particular about breakfast food and I don’t consider things that are dinner foods good as breakfast foods. I even saw 2 Italian guys, so I watched them because I knew they’d find the coffee. Breakfast was delicious, with egg pudding being a new favorite (it’s just flan for breakfast). One morning, I will conquer the congee.
The drive
Then it was off to the Great Wall! Or not… traffic is terrible here, even on weekends. My tour guide/driver also was like ‘oh, there’s this really great jade museum I like to take people to, you wanna go?’ I’ve played this game and am not amused, but I give him the once chance to prove me wrong. We get to the jade “museum” and it’s 2 guys carving jade and a huge show-room of VERY overpriced jade carvings and jewelry. It’s a very high-pressure, “No, keep looking, we have plenty of time” situation. Strike one, buddy.
The Great Wall
We got to the Great Wall and he bought me a ticket and walked me in. Then he went and waited in the car. Seriously, this guy would be so buff if he win with the tourists every time. This was no joke. There are stairs, small stairs, huge tall stairs, wobbly, uneven stairs. So many. I took 2 hours and climbed to one corner, then climbed down to the second corner, then realized I had to climb my gimpy self back up to the first one to get back down. My legs were as wobbly as the stairs.
Strangers are Strange
There are towers spaced out along the Great Wall, some used for signal fires and others used for lookouts. You can walk into them, stare out the windows at the steep drop-off of the hillside. Or, as I was walking, one lady maybe 10 feet in front of me just stepped to the side, dropped trou, and peed right there in the tower. I thought about it and realized we were a million stairs from the entrance, so I guess, when you gotta go…. But then, 2 minutes later, the next tower had been converted to a bathroom. Seriously 2 more minutes, lady. However, I figured…if anywhere will have the squat toilets it would be the Great Wall…and I was right! I didn’t risk trying to use it, lest I soil my clothing so early in the day, but I put a picture up there.
Lunch time
So my driver informs me that lunch is included today at a restaurant near the great wall. We drove for about 20 minutes and we get to…. a giant parking lot full of tour buses. Like 15 of them. We go in and the entire bottom floor of this huge building is another freaking gallery of bullshit tourist trap stuff. I mean, I know I’m spoiled, and I can go to SF China Town any day of the week and buy a bunch of freaking jade bracelets, but when your entire job is to drive tourists around and make money from tips, then you need to up your game buddy. This was definitely his last strike. No strike 3. I’m about to throw down. The “””restaurant””” was literally a buffet with four Chinese dishes and four ‘western’ ones. It was sad. I was the only person there….literally the only person eating there. After that, we drove the hour back to the hotel and I plotted my negotiation tactics for tomorrow.
Beginning the evening
A tour guide and driver picked me up from the hotel and we drove to the theater. Bella, the tour guide pointed out all of the interesting and historical buildings as we drove 45 minutes through town to the theater. Finally, we arrived and the show began. It’s off-season, so the theater itself is maybe 10% capacity.
The show
The show itself was actually pretty amazing. The first part was a balancing act, the one where people balance on their hands on a high pole. The girl who was performing was rock-solid, no muscles trembling, no adjustments, just boom, nailed it. There were some super cool hat jugglers, a slack line guy who was really impressive, some pretty insane bicycle tricks. But my favorite part was the contortionist. It usually is, but this was different. It was a ballerina contortionist. She wore pointe shoes and was performing with a male partner. Now, they do some dance things and she does some ballet positions en pointe, and then do some crazy legs over the head contortion move, while still en pointe. Ok, super cool. Then, they do a lift. And the guy picks her up, and instead of putting her down afterwards, he puts the tips of the point shoes on his shoulders. Now, she is standing en pointe on his shoulders and she does an arabesque on one leg, then pirouettes on the other. She PIROUETTED on a guy, full spin around, as he balances her on his single shoulder. They dance some more, then he picks her up again and puts one pointe shoe on top of his head. She does some contortion-y ballet poses on one foot on the guy’s head as he walks around the stage. HOLY WTF OMG. By far one of the most unique and interesting things I have ever seen.
Dinner – Dim Sum
After the show they took me to Din Tai Fung for dinner. Bella came in with me, recommended some dishes and helped me order, then left me alone to enjoy the plethora of food she had selected. First was a hot/spicy/sour soup. It was good, very filling and gelatinous. Then we had the famous soup dumplings, warm steamed dumplings full of soup that just burst in your mouth. I love those. Then there were some sticky rice dumplings with pork. They were quite large, too big for one bite, and the sticky rice is quite a challenge to eat. Like mochi, it is very dense and chewy. I also ordered some sauteed water lily, which was good, similar to pea shoots. Then came the spicy dumplings. The tour guide assured me they were ‘a little spicy’ and when I asked about the bright orange-red broth they were in, she said that they intentionally make it that color so people will think it’s spicy and it will warm them up. I don’t know that I buy that. It was diablo spicy. Like I thought I was going to die. SO delicious. SOOOO spicy. I kept eating one bite, then having a different dumpling, then going back for the spicy one. My hands were shaking and my nose was running and it was so good. After a very indulgent meal, they brought out a steamed cake for dessert. It was perfect after the spicy dumplings, not too sweet, just like a soft pillowy cake for my scorched tongue.
