Badaling, Badaboom

While I’ve built my own fair share of sound structures, including a snow cave for Boy Scouts, a house of cards on a particularly cloudy weekend and Fort Awesome – an outpost that’s strategically placed between my living room and kitchen, and constructed entirely out of military-grade sofa cushions – I have to admit I’m hard pressed to call anything to mind that matches the scale and genius of the Great Wall of China. I was fortunate enough to visit the Badaling section of the Wall last Sunday, and nothing – not even the countless pictures I’d seen in history books – could have prepared me for it. it’s a staggering work of engineering that’s withstood the tests of both time and graffiti (which are, I often find, pretty much mutually exclusive) and endlessly coils its way across the horizon.

Although the Badaling section, referred to by Lonely Planet as “heavily touristed,” seems to have been restored sometime in the last hundred or so years to the point that it resembles my deck in the city of Culver City, it did lead to a blocked off and decidedly ancient section of the Wall that was a sight and a half to see. The path back, conveniently enough, took us past another man-made wonder: a small encampment of the most tenacious souvenir merchants history’s ever seen. It was like a zombie movie – everywhere I looked, people were staggering toward me with outstretched arms. Granted, their arms were filled with t-shirts and cheap souvenirs instead of superhuman strength and an insatiable hunger for human flesh, but the line between the two was pretty hard to discern after twenty or so minutes. Luckily, that was all the time I needed to load up on a few miniature terra cotta warriors and a Chinese military hat that, in hindsight, might be considered slightly culturally insensitive. But for the “can’t be beat” price of four bucks, that’s a risk I’m willing to take. Then, since the whole outing was organized by the production, a few of us grabbed a bite at the foot of the Wall before heading on back to the hotel.

Which reminds me…having sampled a number of restaurants in the area and lived to tell the tale, I can happily report that my fears of the local cuisine were relatively unfounded. That isn’t to say, however, that there haven’t been some surprises on the menu. At dinner a few nights ago, one of the producers on the film pointed to an interesting looking mushroom dish and asked our translator what it was. After a brief conversation with the waitress, she returned with the response, “I believe you call it ‘Jew’s Ear’.” Needless to say, we ordered it for sheer novelty value alone.

Next entry…The Forbidden City!