Dear Family and Friends,

I knew better and yet, I still did it. After four days with too many stops in order to twist maps into readable angles and reading hundreds of placards in mostly sub-zero temperatures, I was ready for the warmth and ease of a guided tour. So one evening, I plopped hard onto a chair in front of my hostel’s tourist sales desk and asked for a tour to The Great Wall. The travel guy suggested tour number 5 and quoted a higher-end price. My feet were sore and my nose was numb with cold, so I signed up – no questions asked.

I knew better. But did it anyway.

Just after sunrise a few mornings later, I was gathered up by a well-spoken guide and ushered into a white van warmed by a driver. I broke into treats obtained from the posh supermarket that I had discovered the night before (bread and cheese and a pear and bottled Starbucks) as we wended our way to another hostel in order to pick up another tourist like myself, well, except that my tour companion was male and Japanese. We drove north, first along city streets and then picked up a highway. Almost immediately, my Japanese companion drifted off to sleep – which could’ve been my fault as I had immediately launched into interviewing my guide while simultaneously watching the city flash by. My guide answered my questions, even the personal ones, good-naturedly. Amongst the questions asked were: where had my guide studied English? Is English a hard language to study? Does he have brothers and sisters? What did he think of Korea? What did he think of Koreans? And while I was at it, what did he think of Americans? Did he own a car? How would he and his family celebrate New Year’s? What were other holidays celebrated in China? Where were we going first?

“First we are going to a jade factory – jade is very precious to China. You will enjoy this. And then we will visit the Ming Tombs.” My guide replied.

I knew what his reply really meant – and silently groaned. There was no helping this now; I would not enjoy the jade factory. “Oh. Ok. Question: how many factory stops will we be making today?”

“Four.” My guide hesitated before answering and his tone was reluctant.

“Oh. Huh.” Was the most congenial response that I could summon because my brain had kicked into chastisement mode. “Laura, you know better! You should’ve asked if this is the sort-of tour that visits ‘factories.’ Or you should’ve attempted to go with a different tour to a less touristed location. Now you paid too much for a tour that will drag you from place to place selling junk at outrageous prices to hoards of tourists. Crap, crap, crap.”

This self-chastisement was based on experience. One of the most popular, often government-sanctioned ways of squeezing money from tourists in Asia is to sell tours to famous places, tours that also include multiple stops “factories” in order for tourists to get an authentic look at native people manufacturing native products: palm sugar in Thailand, silk in Vietnam, and jade in China. This in and of itself doesn’t sound too bad but the problem with this practice is that the only thing authentic about this sort-of factory is the intent to sell as many products as possible for sky-high prices. In Thailand, for example, we were taken to one store of “native crafts” where my friend and I counted 7 “Made in China” stickers on items priced three-times what we had seen in the local market (and you can bargain down prices at markets) before we walked out of the store in disgust.

In Beijing, I had already discovered a certain level of tourist-selling savvy in places such as Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden Palace. And I had already seen a multitude of tourist gift shops. I was reminded that we Stateside tourists laugh when we visit the Statue of Liberty and then buy a t-shirt, only to find that our souvenir of America was made in China. And that during my various travels I have run across a multitude of “native” tourist items with “Made in China” labels. If I purchased an item marked “Made in China” in Beijing, for once I would be buying “A Made in China” souvenir from China. However, cheery as that thought was, I was a tourist, on a tour, in a country with some tourist savvy that manufactures the majority of the world’s souvenirs. There could be no possible way that the “factories” that we were about to visit were authentic.

So. With one word - “Four” - I knew that I had made a dumb tourist mistake. Nonetheless I was determined to enjoy what I had. With some interest, I examined the enormous jade carving of eight running horses in the lobby of the first “factory” and I was genuinely delighted to discover I had an eye for “real jade” during the ten minute factory informational tour – although the “factory” was a smidge larger than my studio apartment. When we were let loose in the actually-factory-sized gift shop, our day tour guide sought me to say, “I’ll meet you guys in the lobby in 20 minutes.”

With a smile, I brightly inquired, “Could we make it 10?”

“No.”

My guide smiled sympathetically while yanking away my hope and left me to wander through glass cases of jade bangles, fat jade Buddhas, jade bowls, jade eagles (patriotic American style), jade beads, jade beaded necklaces, pearls, slim jade Buddhas, jade tea pots, and oh! I could go on for pages. But your only mistake was to endeavor to read this blog so I shall spare you that annoyance.

Already we were on the outskirts of the city, where the apartment buildings were squatter and spread further apart and finally began turning into sparse black-tiled roofs scattered among withered brown fields. As our van wended through narrow country lanes towards high hills, our day guide, after a well-deserved break from answering my unending questions, began to talk about the tomb site we were about to visit.

The Ming Dynasty, as I’m sure you’ll recall from your Chinese history classes (yeah, I know. What Chinese history classes?), stretched from 1368 to 1644. No doubt a lot can be said about this dynasty but I will confine myself to commenting that the Ming Emperors, especially one Yongle Emperor, seemed an outstandingly ambitious lot and were responsible for the restoration of China’s Grand Canal, they added a vast deal to the Great Wall, and built Beijing’s often-called Forbidden City.

Because the Mings were driven to great building projects and because they felt it only fair that they journey to the next world with near-equal pomp to the Egyptian Pharaohs (I couldn’t help but suspect), selecting a site for the tombs was an arduous process in which the final decision was based on nebulous factors relating to Feng Shui along with tangible factors related to natural scenery. Our guide explained that just after an emperor began his rule, the process of designing and building his tomb would begin. And when the emperor departed, he was sealed with his precious earthly belongings, as well as the still-living tomb laborers, and sometimes even the still-living empress and concubines.

Each Ming tomb was roughly the same design with a “front yard” for the living and a “back yard” for the dead. (Our guide really used the word “yard!”) To pay our visit, we stepped through a classic Chinese gate, arched, painted ochre red with a glazed tile roof and entered the square front yard. The yard was dominated by a large temple flanked two long “divine kitchens.” Inside the temple were instruments ever-set for musicians, a curtained bed that the emperor’s body would only momentarily rest before being sealed into the tomb, and a large alter with candlesticks and the provisions for Confucian ceremonies. Apparently throughout his life, an emperor would visit his ancestor’s tomb in order to pay respect to the departed. As the Ming Dynasty accumulated years and dead emperors, later emperors would send court members to pay respects to longer-dead emperors. However for common people, the tombs were secret, completely buried, did not exist.

The front yard seemed pretty lively for a tomb while the back yard seemed possessed of the gravity of an imperial gravesite. To enter the back yard, we walked the perimeter of the temple and through a gate of ghosts (so called because whoever walked through that gate was never seen again) and then up a long flight of stairs into another gate held a tall stone pillar engraved with the emperor’s name that directly shadowed a mounded hill under which was the actual tomb. From the archway protecting the stone pillar, we peered at the large grass-covered mounded tomb, sealed by an ochre Chinese screen. Our guide told us that this tomb had never been opened. As we departed, we again passed through the gate of ghosts because if we did not, we would leave our soul with the tomb. I wasn’t willing to take any chances!



The tomb tour was interesting but my interest was caught imagining the fate of the tomb builders. The tomb builders’ lives were, literally, devoted to building the tombs. When selected for the honor of building the emperor’s tomb, a worker would be removed from his life, yes, from his family, and confined to a village near his tomb. For days, months, years, he would freeze or sweat, he would ache for his family, and his end would be closed in, dank, and hungry, breathing while the emperor’s body decays. Would the worker feel honored or tortured?


Our tomb park visit was hurried while our next two visits felt interminable. We stopped at two more shops, I mean “factories,” for more “special shopping” and for lunch. Lunch was numerous small plates of barely appetizing Chinese food, the deliciousness of which could easily be exceeded by an American supermarket Chinese counter and afterwards, we were left for yet another 30 minutes of shopping. I wandered the cavernous shopping area with its myriad of tourist items: cloisonné vases of all sizes, t-shirts, fat Buddhas, thin Buddhas, pearls and … and … (you can imagine) mostly price shopping with the notion that it couldn’t hurt to figure out what other people ended up buying and how much NOT to pay.

At one point, because it was a slow day in the money-making factory, one sales lady brought out a Korean traditional dress, holding it against herself to show her friends how she’d look in it. Silently observing this scene, which was much more interesting than the nearby arrayed pens painted with the Imperial palace, my reaction was, “Oh my gosh. Are they trying to pretend that that dress is Chinese? The nerve!” Bored and now curious, I began searching the clothing section for Korean style-dresses but I only found Chinese. Koreans feel that Japan and China have the bad habit of co-opting precious Korean items for their own – apparently I’ve begun to harbor this concern as well. Perhaps I’ve already been in Korea for too long. Koreans say that it is scientifically proven that kimchi can prevent illness, I wondered if studies had been conducted about whether kimchi causes paranoia.

Finally, we drove higher into the hills and soon the hills became low mountains and surprisingly soon we were at a section of The Great Wall of China. The day was hazy; nonetheless the mountains felt familiar, all those pictures in textbooks and PBS documentaries and coffee table books, I imagined. Our guide trotted out the usual statistics, rendered unboring by the fact that we were approaching the actual wonder. He informed us that the section of the Wall that we were visiting, known as the Badaling, had been rebuilt on top of an older portion of the wall around 1400, during the Ming Dynasty and had not been touched since. Hmm… Anyway, I thought back to what I’ve read about the Wall – probably what you’ve read: that it is a wonder of the ancient world, built on the ridges of the mountains to defend the country against marauders, but more often used as a road to transport goods. Some estimates peg the centuries-long wall building death toll in the range of 2 to 3 million. The urban legend that the Great Wall can be seen from the moon persists… although it has been definitively debunked on many occasions. All this crossed my mind just before my next realization: touring the Great Wall meant that I was going to climb to the top of a mountain, albeit not a very tall mountain, via many, many stone stairs. I wrinkled my nose at this thought; I wasn’t in the mood for an intense hike. But soon our van was parked and our guide pointed us up the path, politely ordering us to return an hour and a half.

An hour and a half.

My Japanese companion and I took turns posing for pictures at the base of the stairs and then we climbed. The stones of the wall were smooth, and the stairs irregular. Some were shallow, a matter of inches, and others were level with my knees, which made took more effort to climb. Two-story guard towers with arched windows that peered over the hills were set at irregular intervals along the way up. Climbing stairs naturally made me puff and the towers were a good excuse to stop to stick my head out the window and absorb the view. The hills below seemed arranged in layered terraces, lined with stubby tinderbox trees. As we worked our way higher, the intervals to catch our breaths became closer and closer together. I kept reminding myself to relax, to enjoy the time, to savor the moment, but I kept looking at the time, measuring how far I wanted to go versus the advancing minutes.

The final guard tower mounted at the summit was two stories high. My Japanese companion and I scrambled up steep stones that were cracked and bowed in the middle and found ourselves on small roof enclosed by ramparts. Leaning against the stones, I lightly shivered as I absorbed the view. Despite our hard work, the day remained stubbornly hazy and the view of the Wall was less than perfect as it snaked through the shriveled brush. Without taking my eyes from the view, I reached into my bag and practically sucked my water bottle down my dry throat. I was in the midst of viewing my second wonder of the ancient world – and I didn’t have the time to properly explore, the view was obscured, and the stones under my feet were too clean to be 600 years old. My primary feeling was disappointment, not wonder.


Yet I was standing in a place where, for centuries, men in armor had cocked arrows to guard their family and friends and their emperor. A place where merchants and monks and laborers with stooped backs paced the spine of their country, exchanging goods for a living. I was standing in a place so historic, so amazing, so famous that it is classified as a world wonder. Billions of people dream of visiting but only a fraction of those would ever get closer to the Wall than examining stones in a coffee table book.

It was then that the wonder struck. I arched my neck, threw my hands to the sky and let a long, “Whoo hoo!!!” echo across the ramparts. The tour was a mistake. But that didn’t matter so much. I, one insignificant Laura Drumm, was in China, puzzingly, distant, mysterious China, with my feet planted on The Great Wall of China.

“Whoo hoo!!!!!!”
--Laura

PS: After returning to the base of the Wall, defiantly twenty minutes late, I asked our guide to again tell me about the Wall. I was most interested in whether the Wall had been restored. Our guide insisted that the portion of the Wall that we had climbed had not been touched since the Ming Dynasty. That was my other realization of the day: that later I would need to fact-check our guide’s explanations. Sure enough, much of what he told us turned out false. For example, I cannot say which Ming Emperor’s tomb we visited, but if we visited Dingling, the 13th Ming Emperor’s tomb, there is an entrance to the underground tomb that we missed. That tomb had been unsealed and thoroughly excavated. And as for the Badaling portion of the Great Wall, it underwent heavy restoration in the mid-1950s. Sometimes you do not get what you pay for.

Post Script II: You can see the Ming Tombs for yourself at: http://www.world-heritage-tour.org/asia/china/ming-qing/eastern-tombs/map.html. Warning! This online tour may cause motion-sickness!