Jay K.
[The local peasants we met on the Great Wall]
Ep.10 One World One Dream
So many stories to tell, I don’t know where to start. I will start with the title of this episode. “One World One Dream, 同一个世界，同一个梦想” is the official slogan of Beijing Olympic 2008. You can see that phrase everywhere here. The whole city is eagerly waiting for Olympic; you can see genuine enthusiasm. I first didn’t like that slogan, because for me that just sounds like an echo of China’s “one China policy”. It sounds too political to me. However, it sounds cool and inspirational; I cannot deny that it is a catchy phrase.
If you turn on TV in China, you will be surprised at two things. First, you will be surprised at that there are many different versions of one channel: CCTV (Chinese government owned TV station). There are CCTV1,2,3,…7, CCTV kids, and so on. Secondly, you will be surprised at the fact that the most TV programs are about upcoming Olympic.
Last weekend as I told you guys, I went to the Great Wall—the icon of China. As you guys know, the Great Wall is really long so that there are many different parts of the Wall. We went to the part near the city called Cheng De. Cheng De is a small city, which has many tourist sites including imperial Summer Palace and Lama Temples. We visited all of them over three days.
On the first day, we visited the imperial Summer Palace, the summer resort for the emperor. It wasn’t as magnificent as I expected, but still very big and beautiful. The lake was very impressive. On the second day, we visited two Buddhist temples. Both were built for Tibetan Buddhists. They were very magnificent and grand. If the Church is the height of Western architecture, the Buddhist Temple is the height of Eastern architecture.
[Go Beijing!]
[This is the biggest wooden Buddha in the wolrd]
It was interesting to see these temples because they were built for Tibetan monks. They represent the good relationship between Tibet and the central government. These temples are not only for tourists sightseeing, but also for the local believers. I had a chance to see actual Buddhists. Some were really serious about their prayers. The temple was full of incense smokes. It was a very hot day, but the blue sky made my pictures gorgeous.
[This temple is an imitation of the famous temple in Tibet]
[my favorite picture from the trip]
[the stars I saw before we left for the Great Wall]
On the last day, we climbed the Great Wall. No explanation is necessary for the Great Wall. If you want to, you can look it up on Wikipedia. One thing, you cannot see the Great Wall from space; that’s a lie. You can check it through Google Earth. Sometimes, I think that my pictures make China look better and nicer than it actually is. These pictures are photoshoped and saturated. However, the Great Wall is an exception. I cannot make it look better; my pictures are rather degenerated imitation of the original.
Let me tell you one thing about the Great Wall: it is higher than you think. The Walls are built on the mountains, so they are pretty high from the ground. And, I am scared of height. Most people hiked the whole section (about 10km), but I didn’t. First, I don’t like hiking. Second, I want to take time to look around and take pictures. Third, I am scared of height, so cannot go fast. These are not excuses; anyway I didn’t finish the whole section with others.
Three other friends and I were taking time and slowly hiking and on the way we met local peasants. There are many local peasants on the Great Wall. They just come out to sell tourist stuff to visitors. We met two who look like a married couple. They were really nice. They helped us to climb the walls and told us stories. They were local peasants and come to the Great Wall every weekend to make extra money. I am proud that I understood most of what they said.
I heard many of these local people are nice to visitors and help them to sell their stuffs. That might be true. I believe that most of them have insincere motives when they help us. However, for me, they are nonetheless nice and warm people. I really felt warm when I talked to them; you might say I was just naïve. To be honest with you guys, I didn’t like China that much before meeting these peasants. I wasn’t sure that I could live here for a year, but after meeting them, I started to like China. Despite of terrible weather and dirty toilet, I think I can survive in China because of these warm Chinese people.
One World One Dream. That might be not true. The world isn’t one, and each one has his or her own dream. However, there is only one mankind. I believe that people are same everywhere. The trip to the Great Wall was tiring but I got something very important from the trip.
This is it for the Great Wall trip. I still believe that my pictures speak better than my writing.
Again, you can see more pictures at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamadreamer/sets/72157606200516635/. I took more than 300 pictures so cannot show you all in this post.
Ps. I want to talk about things that I bought in China including my cool electronic bike and my daughter in this episode, but I am afraid that it will be too long for one episode.
Fin.
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