Chloe Harrington, Public Health in China, Summer 2014
This post will be devoted to the various hiking and outdoors trips that I have made over the summer.
The first was hiking the Great Wall. We drove about 2 hours away from campus to a less-touristy section of the Great Wall. This section still had a quaint little town that surrounded it at the foot of the hills, which was quite overpriced. The hike was honestly one of the most tasking physical exercises I have ever undertaken in my life. I am obviously not very in shape, and I was attempting to keep pace with a division 1 athlete, who was basically at a jog the whole time. I realized my folly too late, though, and let me tell you- my calves have not been the same since. The day was intensely hot, I think it was about 95 F, but the sun was hidden by the even more intense Beijing fog, which made the views not as optimal as they could have been. Not to say that the views weren’t amazing, just that they are not evident in any of the photos that I took. We hiked for the better part of the morning/ afternoon, then we took a toboggan ride down. Yep, a $10 USD ticket allowed us to sled down the side of a mountain, which was so much fun until we all got traffic jammed behind a family and we had to go slowly the rest of the way. Regardless, it was my first time going to the Great Wall and it was relatively early on in the trip, so everything was just amazing to me. The pure history of China has never ceased to fascinate me throughout the trip. On one excursion we went to the Beijing Museum, where they had an exhibit specifically devoted to the history of China versus what was happening in the Western Hemisphere. We were 3/4 of the way through when George Washington appeared.
The next nature experience I had was an herb-picking excursion planned by Professor Gu on an unrestored portion of the Great Wall. We really had no idea what to expect- I personally thought that we would be brought to a large field and expected to work our way through picking herbs, but it turned out to be much more of a winding path hike up to the wall then back down. The best part of the trip, hands down, was our 70-year old guide, Daya, clad in army camouflage, wielding a hand axe and a leather purse. He led us on about a 3 hour hike; when we got there, Professor Gu bought us fireworks from a man selling them on the wall (we were in the middle of nowhere so this salesman was very confusing to me). These were Chinese fireworks, which he didn’t really warn us about. They were SO loud, the first time we set one off, there was not one of us who wasn’t running for cover and ducking. We set off 10 of them and then continued on our hike back down.
The third time I went hiking this trip was actually just a few days ago, when a group of friends and I went to the Fragrant Hills of Beijing. This name, however, is a misnomer, because they are neither hills nor fragrant. It is in fact a very high mountain that mostly smells like just normal fresh air. It was a beautiful clear day, so we got an amazing view of Beijing. The hike was grueling, comparable to the first time we hiked the Great Wall, which is saying something (obviously the time we hiked with a 70 year old guide was slightly less fast paced than with the athlete in lead, although he really didn’t go that slowly). Anyway, we got to the top, where it was disputed whether we saw a horse or not in the bushes; the group is still divided on the topic, but I did not see any horses. The hike up was very well paved, but the hike down we decided to go off-roading. We walked down some very steep and slightly dangerous dirt paths but eventually reached a pagoda where a group of people in business-casual were having a chat. This was confusing because the only path to this place was a very steep and difficult dirt path and these people were not dirty or sweaty. They chatted with us and tested our Chinese a little bit by messing with us, then eventually we parted ways on different paths. This hike was amazing, and the view was unforgettable.
Although I am not a huge nature person or an athletic one, I am really glad I got to explore nature and some of the beauty that Beijing has to offer.