I walk the line between good and evil
Hello everybody. It's weird how since getting to Japan we've actually had much less net access than before. (In fact, the best net connection of the whole trip was in Mongolia!) We've been staying in old-fashioned inns and minshuku (which are basically B&Bs, only nicer, I think), and in Japan there aren't netcafes all over the place because everyone has a computer. The ones they have rock my socks off - they've got comfy sofas, DVD and manga libraries, free sweets and all manner of fun stuff - but they're correspondingly expensive. I am speaking to you now in another stolen wifi moment, in a coffee shop in Karatsu. Karatsu is a wee town near Fukuoka on the south island of Japan and isn't even mentioned in the Rough Guide. We're staying with Ivan's friend Leah, an English teacher who's been driving us around at breakneck speed in the little car she calls 'the hairdryer'. Tonight we go to the bathhouse and do karaoke. (Not simultaneously, though that would be... interesting.) Home next week. It's a very, very strange thought.
I'm way behind with this, but I'm going to carry on telling you about China, and the day we went to the Great Wall...
Though for a while that morning it looked like we mightn’t get to the Great Wall at all. The bus to Jinshanling coughed its way along the motorway for a few minutes at a time, then the coughing would turn into shuddering and the driver would pull over, and he and his friend would tinker with the engine. Once another tourist bus pulled in alongside us and its driver got out to help, while its passengers made puzzled faces at us and we did the same back. The driver would get back in with some huge soot-encrusted engine part and put it by his seat - a cylinder of many layers of wire mesh was first, then a bucket-shaped thing with hooks sticking out of it. He’d set off again and then the shuddering would start up and he’d cluck his tongue and pull over. There was a pile of engine parts in the front after a while. I wondered how there was any bus left. An Italian man with spectacularly bushy armpits was sitting beside me, tutting and making fun of the drivers’ accents. Finally they pulled into a garage, where mechanics were swarming over a rust-covered lorry chassis. The driver said it’d be twenty minutes. "'Clen-ee min-oo’ - that means an hour, you know,” said the Italian, unfunnily. Meanwhile Ivan was sitting with the Italian’s friend, who was reading inspirational Christian literature in between telling Ivan stories about his time as a professional card cheat and con man. I heard stories of scams from a Colombian - the “I’m a Chinese tourist, come for an exorbitant dinner so I can practice my English” one, the art student one (“come and see my exhibition for my final exams, it's free to look… oh, now that you're here, I forgot to mention that I’ll fail unless you buy something”). But it actually did take twenty minutes, and finally, five hours after we’d left Beijing, we were there.
We’d hoped for food, having been up for the bus at 7am, too early for breakfast. But there was nothing at Jinshanling, just a couple of tiny kiosks and hordes of vendors selling ‘I Climbed the Great Wall’ T-shirts to people who hadn’t climbed it yet. So we hiked the Wall on a packet of Oreos and a couple of bananas. We clambered through more than thirty of its towers, climbed up its steep stairways and sidled crabwise down the other side, along the ridged backs of the hills. We both poured with sweat; I almost wept for joy when we found an old man selling bottles of water with still-frozen cores. There was the usual pattern of a hike. At the start, the feeling that it’s impossible, it’s all too difficult, and how am I supposed to get to that tower way up there when I’m already panting like a labrador in midsummer? Then came the second wind, the third wind, the nth wind, each new burst of energy lasting for longer. Starting to do things like race Ivan to the tops of hills or take steps two at a time, because I could. The usual feeling, two-thirds of the way in, that I was invincible and could go for hours more. Then the happy endorphin-soaked exhaustion setting in as the end approached and we crossed a suspension bridge over a green river, just before sunset.
All the time I was trying to comprehend how old the Wall is, with its stones crumbling at the edges. Trying to imagine soldiers posted out here, in the towers, summer and winter, when it was the edge of their civilised world. Wondering how it would feel to be standing here on guard - behind me, home and safety and fire; in front of me the lampless darkness of Outside. Stamping my feet to keep warm, watching for movement in the trees down there. But it was hard to get mystical when it was a challenge just to keep upright and keep climbing.
The other thing that made it hard to get mystical was the vendors. They were everywhere, following us along the wall going “hello? Hello? Hello? Where are you from? T-shirt?” and claiming to be guides, though it’s hard to see how you can guide someone along a line from A to B. I started out wanting to chat with them, but the dull sensation of disappointment when seemingly genuine conversations turned into sales pitches started to get to me. One of them reached down to give me a hand up a steep incline and I was afraid she’d charge me for it. After a while Ivan and I started telling them we were Swedish, just for variety, and talking in a mixture of Irish and French to confuse them even further. But that was about the time the invincible phase kicked in, and after a while of hard marching, we looked up to realise we’d pulled ahead of the whole group. No one was around. Except for the ones sitting in the towers, vendors didn’t bother with two people on their own. There we were, perched on the spine of the hill, with the sounds of the countryside floating up to us from either side - crickets, dogs, cows and birds - and a sweet cool breeze blowing, and space to breathe and be silent and just enjoy it.
And then we arrived at Simatai, and it was glorious downhill to the bus park, where there was water! and beer!! I bought a willow-pattern bead bracelet at a souvenir stall - a battle trophy - and nearly died of teh kewt while holding the stallkeeper’s tiny white puppy, xiao pei they called him, 28 days old and small enough to cup in my hand.
I fell asleep on the bus and woke to find myself back in Beijing among its coloured lights, hanging lanterns and crazy traffic. It was beautiful, but I was glad to have felt the quiet and emptiness of Out There too. As it turned out, it was the only chance we got.
The first few pictures - the ones I've managed to squeeze through the one-bar connection - are here.
I'm way behind with this, but I'm going to carry on telling you about China, and the day we went to the Great Wall...
Though for a while that morning it looked like we mightn’t get to the Great Wall at all. The bus to Jinshanling coughed its way along the motorway for a few minutes at a time, then the coughing would turn into shuddering and the driver would pull over, and he and his friend would tinker with the engine. Once another tourist bus pulled in alongside us and its driver got out to help, while its passengers made puzzled faces at us and we did the same back. The driver would get back in with some huge soot-encrusted engine part and put it by his seat - a cylinder of many layers of wire mesh was first, then a bucket-shaped thing with hooks sticking out of it. He’d set off again and then the shuddering would start up and he’d cluck his tongue and pull over. There was a pile of engine parts in the front after a while. I wondered how there was any bus left. An Italian man with spectacularly bushy armpits was sitting beside me, tutting and making fun of the drivers’ accents. Finally they pulled into a garage, where mechanics were swarming over a rust-covered lorry chassis. The driver said it’d be twenty minutes. "'Clen-ee min-oo’ - that means an hour, you know,” said the Italian, unfunnily. Meanwhile Ivan was sitting with the Italian’s friend, who was reading inspirational Christian literature in between telling Ivan stories about his time as a professional card cheat and con man. I heard stories of scams from a Colombian - the “I’m a Chinese tourist, come for an exorbitant dinner so I can practice my English” one, the art student one (“come and see my exhibition for my final exams, it's free to look… oh, now that you're here, I forgot to mention that I’ll fail unless you buy something”). But it actually did take twenty minutes, and finally, five hours after we’d left Beijing, we were there.
We’d hoped for food, having been up for the bus at 7am, too early for breakfast. But there was nothing at Jinshanling, just a couple of tiny kiosks and hordes of vendors selling ‘I Climbed the Great Wall’ T-shirts to people who hadn’t climbed it yet. So we hiked the Wall on a packet of Oreos and a couple of bananas. We clambered through more than thirty of its towers, climbed up its steep stairways and sidled crabwise down the other side, along the ridged backs of the hills. We both poured with sweat; I almost wept for joy when we found an old man selling bottles of water with still-frozen cores. There was the usual pattern of a hike. At the start, the feeling that it’s impossible, it’s all too difficult, and how am I supposed to get to that tower way up there when I’m already panting like a labrador in midsummer? Then came the second wind, the third wind, the nth wind, each new burst of energy lasting for longer. Starting to do things like race Ivan to the tops of hills or take steps two at a time, because I could. The usual feeling, two-thirds of the way in, that I was invincible and could go for hours more. Then the happy endorphin-soaked exhaustion setting in as the end approached and we crossed a suspension bridge over a green river, just before sunset.
All the time I was trying to comprehend how old the Wall is, with its stones crumbling at the edges. Trying to imagine soldiers posted out here, in the towers, summer and winter, when it was the edge of their civilised world. Wondering how it would feel to be standing here on guard - behind me, home and safety and fire; in front of me the lampless darkness of Outside. Stamping my feet to keep warm, watching for movement in the trees down there. But it was hard to get mystical when it was a challenge just to keep upright and keep climbing.
The other thing that made it hard to get mystical was the vendors. They were everywhere, following us along the wall going “hello? Hello? Hello? Where are you from? T-shirt?” and claiming to be guides, though it’s hard to see how you can guide someone along a line from A to B. I started out wanting to chat with them, but the dull sensation of disappointment when seemingly genuine conversations turned into sales pitches started to get to me. One of them reached down to give me a hand up a steep incline and I was afraid she’d charge me for it. After a while Ivan and I started telling them we were Swedish, just for variety, and talking in a mixture of Irish and French to confuse them even further. But that was about the time the invincible phase kicked in, and after a while of hard marching, we looked up to realise we’d pulled ahead of the whole group. No one was around. Except for the ones sitting in the towers, vendors didn’t bother with two people on their own. There we were, perched on the spine of the hill, with the sounds of the countryside floating up to us from either side - crickets, dogs, cows and birds - and a sweet cool breeze blowing, and space to breathe and be silent and just enjoy it.
And then we arrived at Simatai, and it was glorious downhill to the bus park, where there was water! and beer!! I bought a willow-pattern bead bracelet at a souvenir stall - a battle trophy - and nearly died of teh kewt while holding the stallkeeper’s tiny white puppy, xiao pei they called him, 28 days old and small enough to cup in my hand.
I fell asleep on the bus and woke to find myself back in Beijing among its coloured lights, hanging lanterns and crazy traffic. It was beautiful, but I was glad to have felt the quiet and emptiness of Out There too. As it turned out, it was the only chance we got.
The first few pictures - the ones I've managed to squeeze through the one-bar connection - are here.