Wake up early thanks to the traffic and crowds of people at the station across the street. Wait for Eri to get ready - imperceptible changes in makeup. We have a rushed breakfast in the hostel and check out of our room. We wait in the lobby for our tour guide. He is a young guy, about 32, good English. He tells us we are the only ones on our tour today. Lucky. We walk down the street to meet the driver in the minibus. He is chain smoking in the street. Unbelievably, people smoke more here than in Japan. I realise that today marks one year since I quit smoking. Blimey.
Highway out of the centre of Beijing. The height of buildings seems to increase, as does the dust on the roads. This is where most people live. The tour guide tells us about house prices. They are less the Japan, and the apartments are bigger. It doesn't really surprise me. We talk about language. He tells me Chinese is easier than English. No tenses. I am unconvinced. The minibus passes the Olympic martial arts stadium. All of that for Judo and wrestling? A lot of money has been spent on homoeroticism.
We arrive at our first stop, a government-run jade factory. It seems that a stop (or three) at government arts and craft factories is par-for-the-course in these kind of cheap tours. The government make money on everything sold. Only a fraction goes to the workers that slave here everday and live in the blocks of flats just visible from the tour guest toilet. A lot of Russians wander round the showroom buying the largest and most gaudy jade sculptures imaginable: a row of three jade galleons, each about 6ft tall, a 10ft jade vase, an elephant carrying a monkey on its back, life size. Astonishing. We don't buy anything.
Next we move to the Ming Tombs. Very beautiful. All the tombs are arranged according to Chinese (nonsense) theories of Feng Shui; facing water, mountains to the side and back to the wall. The emperor was buried, with many precious items, by his loyal bodyguards. A huge artificial hill was built and the dead emperor was placed in a chamber inside. The entrance was then sealed, forever, by the bodyguards who proceed to die of oxygen starvation beside him. The guide informs us that they were proud to do so. I can almost believe it. A film could be made about them, I think. The tombs are dotted throughout the valley, the people collecting tickets and working in the fields are apparantly descendants of these bodyguards. I am sceptical. We exit through the Ghost gate, back into the world of the living.
Back to our minibus. Eri goes to sleep. I talk to the tour guide about Jackie Chan and Jet Lee. He informs me that Jet Lee's Kung Fu is superior to Jackie's. Who would have known? The next stop is at a Cloisonné factory. Cloisonné is apparantly a traditional Chinese art form where a copper vase/cup/etc is inlaid with intricate patterns of copper wire. Enamel glaze is then overlaid into the gaps in the wire to colour-in the pattern. It's quite beautiful although our attention is distracted by the tour guide from the museum who insists on leaning in towards us with every sentence. He smells a little of natto. He gets very close.
Lunch. A traditional Chinese meal. I think that the tradition of which they speak is the tradition of the Chinese takeaway in the west rather than one native to China. It's all food that I have seen not a trace of since ordering from the local in W6. Very nice though, and because there are only two of us at our table, we get extra large helpings. Back to the bus.
Finally, the Great Wall. It is big. One might even say, Great. We start to walk up the section we are in, Badaling. We wonder where the cable car that the guide book mentions is? We walk a little further. It's really steep. We wonder where the slide down that the guide book mentions is? We walk near the top, very steep and incredibly windy and cold. We wonder where the massive Beijing Olympics 2008 sign that the guide book mentions is? Despite how cool it is, we feel a little dissappointed that we can't slide down from the top. When we get to the bottom, I notice that on a dustbin it says "Juyongguan Great Wall". It's not Badaling at all, but the less interesting section 10 kms of mountain road closer to Beijing. We get back into the coach. I am fuming but we decide not to mention anything until we get back to our hostel.
Quickly sprint past the Olympic Birds' Nest stadium. It's impressive, but they are going to have to do a serious job of cleaning the vast building site around it. The water cube swimming stadium is impressive too. Will be very interesting to see them on TV looking pristine in 6 months. We are taken to a tea house (tea leaf shop), where after a brief demonstration of tea-tasting, we are followed round the shop for ten minutes by the shop assistant who urges us to buy things. Thanks to the immense pressure, we buy nothing, despite Eri wanting to buy souvenirs for her family.
Outside the shop our tour guide informs us that we will have to take the subway back to our hostel as he has got a rush job to pick up VIPs at the airport. Like we aren't VIPs. Hmmm. I expect this might be the reason he took us to the nearest part of the Great Wall. He denies we missed Badaling. He says there was a cable-car, just one that I couldn't see. He fails to pay us the subway fare. Back at the hotel, I get into a huge argument with the tour desk, who refuse to refund our money despite our tour not going to the area we paid to go to and despite not being taken back to the hotel. After phoning our tour guide they start to deny that we were even in Juyongguan. Finally, after threatening to tell the Lonely Planet about their tours, we get our money back. I feel guilty. At one point they accused me of only kicking up a fuss to get a free tour. I am acutely aware of having more money that the average Chinese person, and I don't feel particularly great about it, but I refuse to pay to be ripped-off, especially when me and Eri are only here for 3 days and have no other chance to see the Wall. After looking on the internet later, I realise that we definitely did not go to Badaling, and it makes me feel a little better.
We move to our new hotel. 4 Banqiao Courtyard. It is an oasis of calm after the Youth Hostel. We are the only guests. It is a courtyard hotel in a hutong in the north of the centre of the city. A really nice neighbourhood. New subway lines. Really lovely family staff. An off-season discount means that the room is 500 yuan between us (about 40 quid). Amazingly cheap. After unpacking and relaxing we head to the Bar With No Name by the lake. It is cold, but the log fire warms us up. A long, tiring day. Apart from the massive argument, it was good fun. 798 tomorrow...
