I had grand plans of doing a hike in every country and
while that didn’t materialize in Japan (I blame it on Mount Fuji being closed
for the winter season), I feel as though I hiked enough in China to make up for
it. I signed up to hike the Great Wall of China through a Semester at Sea trip.
I mean how hard can it be? The answer? Really freaking hard. But also, really stinking
awesome. According to Raymond, our adorable and spunky tour guide, we were
hiking on the “wild” part of the wall. A remote section that has yet to be
rebuilt and, as it turns out, looks nothing like the pictures I’ve seen on TV.
I also figure out why people filming those TV shows don’t go to this section of
the wall. Wild was a pretty accurate description.
After driving more than 2 hours to get out of the center
of Beijing, we arrived at the Gubeikou section of the Great Wall. We then
proceeded to literally scale the side of the mountain in order to make it to
the top. The views from the top were absolutely breathtaking. Mountaintops
etched with tracings of the Great Wall as far as the eye can see. While
sections of the wall were little more than a few stones placed into the
hillside, there were also sections where you could very easily envision how
this world wonder must have looked in all its glory centuries ago. After hiking
for a few hours, we stopped for lunch. Our guide kept telling us we were going
to have Big Macs for lunch, which I thought was code for hamburger. My thought?
Oh, how sweet that they’re going to cook out hamburgers for us on the Great
Wall. Boy, does a burger sound good. I was shocked and appalled to see that
they had honest to goodness Big Macs ready for us to devour. There were porters
standing by, who had strapped coolers to their backs to schlep 100 Big Macs,
Filet O’Fish, and McChicken sandwiches up the hill for the crazy Americans. And
they were piping hot (don’t ask me how they were still hot since I estimate
that the closest McDonald’s was at least an hour away after you made it down the mountain). Everything about it was
disturbing. I couldn’t decide what bothered me the most. Was it the fact that I
had hiked for 3 hours and still had another 4 to go and all they were giving me
to eat was trans fats, empty calories, and special sauce? Or was it the fact
that we were atop one of the seven wonders of the world and we were eating fast
food? Or was it the fact that they thought, as flag-waving, Starbucks-drinking,
McDonalds-eating Americans, that this is what we wanted? Again, everything
about it was disturbing. One student pulled out a Clif Bar, refusing to eat a
Big Mac on the Great Wall. I admire the heck out of that kid and sort of wish I
had done the same. While it is a funny story to tell, it is also pretty
horrifying that our identities as Americans boils down to “Would you like fries
with that?” About an hour before we were finished for the day, I felt my blood
sugar drop to my toes and things get a little blurry in my peripheral vision.
Deciding that the top of the Great Wall was not the place to have a medical
emergency, I sat down, drank some water, and devoured the Snickers bar they
gave us (Turns out Snickers does really satisfy) and then proceeded to curse
those Big Macs all the way down the mountain.
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