The curtain rises and on the stage you can see two Indonesian couples, one British-Chinese couple, a five-member family originally from India but living in San Francisco, a four-member Chinese family living in Tennessee, an Italian girl, a Mexican, a Spaniard and... Yuyu. What is the name of the movie?
The Great Wall: same way up, same way down.
Seven in the morning and no one is showing up at the full-of-marble reception area of my hotel in Beijing. I am supposed to be joining a guided tour to visit one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, but, there I am alone with my brownish-greenish eyes half closed thanks to Morpheus. “ And now?”
After more than thirty minutes waiting, a very tiny and lively Chinese girl with huge black sun glasses -no idea if fake or real, the glasses, not the Chinese girl- holding back her messy hair, comes to me very excitedly and asks me if I was the españolito with whom she had talked last night:
- Hurry up, we are late. One of the other tourists was too late this morning and now we need to catch up.
- Yes, let us go! Let us see who runs faster... “I don’t know why, but I think that your friends from the jade factory and the tea house -also included in the tour- will not suffer from this delay”. While we literally run towards the bus, Dora, a little bit evil-minded, can’t avoid having that thought,
I don’t know where and when was the last time that I hired a guided tour but I recall perfectly saying to myself: never ever again. So, here I am now sitting in a small old Chinese tourist bus full of unknown people. “At least there is air conditioning”.
- Good morning my dear friends, my name is 我也覺得 (Chinese symbols selected randomly to express what I understood) but you can call me: Yuyu.
- “Great, thank you”. I feel like two fingers are trying to pull up both side ends of my lips.
- Today I am going to be your tour guide to the historical and impressive Great Wall. On the way to the Great Wall we will be visiting the Ming tombs and a jade factory, where, by the way, we will have lunch.
- “I knew it... Have fun!”
- Can you understand my Chinglish ?
- Yes!!! Everybody answering at the same time.
- Good, then let me explain to you a little bit about the history of my beautiful country: China. The first parts of the Great Wall were ordered to be built in 221 BC by King Zheng of Qin, who united China basically by conquering the states of his neighbours, and thus became the first emperor of the Qin dinasty. But the main portion of the Great Wall, what can be seen today, was built in the fourteenth century during the Ming dinasty, in order to protect ourselves from the invaders and rebels from Mongolia.
On the way to the Great Wall, we will visit the Ming tombs, which are at the end of the Sacred Way and aligned with the Fobidden City and the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Do you know the Feng Shui...? In China, it is very important the harmony of things... The interaction between the five elements: fire, water, wood, metal, earth... The balance of the Yin and the Yang...
The last emperor was Pu Yi from the Qing dinasty until 1912. Don’t confuse with Qin (the first one). Qin, Qing, Qin, Qing... Years later, since China was very poor, the Japanese -bad bad bad- invaded our territory... Mao Zedong finally won the revolution and founded the current People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949... With Mao, China started to recover slowly but we were still very poor because we had to return the money lent by Russia...
After quite a lot of non-stop-fast Chinglish talking from Yuyu, everybody in the bus is already sleeping -the power of Morpheus-, but she does not care and continues with her monologue. I realize that there are two or three heads in the bus still straight up and kind of listening to her, and my not-at-all-small-sized head is of course one of them. Dora is totally absorbed by what the teacher is explaining. I feel like one of those good students at school sitting in the first row with the hand continuesly up.
- Mrs. Yuyu, Mrs. Yuyu, I have a question: were the Mongolian really the bad guys of the movie?
Anyway, at one in the afternoon -six hours after departure- we finally arrive to the Great Wall -main objective of the tour- and Yuyu says:
- My dear friends, now you have two hours to walk along the Great Wall, remember that we still need to visit a tea house on the way back to Beijing, so I recommend that you take the cable car up to the top of the mountain -170 Chinese Yuan- to optimize your time. And the most important thing: don’t go to Mongolia. Remember always to walk same way up and same way down. Repeat with me: same way up, same way down...
In summary, and now seriously, the Great Wall is an impressive and breathtaking experience. Over 8000km of wall built by persons? There we were, my new really nice friends from the guided tour and this españolito, finally taking pictures like kids, as if there would be no tomorrow, which can indeed be dangerous, because some stretches of the Great Wall are actually quite steep. What a memorable fun day!
Please have a look and I see you all very soon, my dearest surreal readers, in Shanghai.
To be continued
The Great Wall: same way up, same way down.
Seven in the morning and no one is showing up at the full-of-marble reception area of my hotel in Beijing. I am supposed to be joining a guided tour to visit one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, but, there I am alone with my brownish-greenish eyes half closed thanks to Morpheus. “ And now?”
After more than thirty minutes waiting, a very tiny and lively Chinese girl with huge black sun glasses -no idea if fake or real, the glasses, not the Chinese girl- holding back her messy hair, comes to me very excitedly and asks me if I was the españolito with whom she had talked last night:
- Hurry up, we are late. One of the other tourists was too late this morning and now we need to catch up.
- Yes, let us go! Let us see who runs faster... “I don’t know why, but I think that your friends from the jade factory and the tea house -also included in the tour- will not suffer from this delay”. While we literally run towards the bus, Dora, a little bit evil-minded, can’t avoid having that thought,
I don’t know where and when was the last time that I hired a guided tour but I recall perfectly saying to myself: never ever again. So, here I am now sitting in a small old Chinese tourist bus full of unknown people. “At least there is air conditioning”.
- Good morning my dear friends, my name is 我也覺得 (Chinese symbols selected randomly to express what I understood) but you can call me: Yuyu.
- “Great, thank you”. I feel like two fingers are trying to pull up both side ends of my lips.
- Today I am going to be your tour guide to the historical and impressive Great Wall. On the way to the Great Wall we will be visiting the Ming tombs and a jade factory, where, by the way, we will have lunch.
- “I knew it... Have fun!”
- Can you understand my Chinglish ?
- Yes!!! Everybody answering at the same time.
- Good, then let me explain to you a little bit about the history of my beautiful country: China. The first parts of the Great Wall were ordered to be built in 221 BC by King Zheng of Qin, who united China basically by conquering the states of his neighbours, and thus became the first emperor of the Qin dinasty. But the main portion of the Great Wall, what can be seen today, was built in the fourteenth century during the Ming dinasty, in order to protect ourselves from the invaders and rebels from Mongolia.
On the way to the Great Wall, we will visit the Ming tombs, which are at the end of the Sacred Way and aligned with the Fobidden City and the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Do you know the Feng Shui...? In China, it is very important the harmony of things... The interaction between the five elements: fire, water, wood, metal, earth... The balance of the Yin and the Yang...
The last emperor was Pu Yi from the Qing dinasty until 1912. Don’t confuse with Qin (the first one). Qin, Qing, Qin, Qing... Years later, since China was very poor, the Japanese -bad bad bad- invaded our territory... Mao Zedong finally won the revolution and founded the current People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949... With Mao, China started to recover slowly but we were still very poor because we had to return the money lent by Russia...
After quite a lot of non-stop-fast Chinglish talking from Yuyu, everybody in the bus is already sleeping -the power of Morpheus-, but she does not care and continues with her monologue. I realize that there are two or three heads in the bus still straight up and kind of listening to her, and my not-at-all-small-sized head is of course one of them. Dora is totally absorbed by what the teacher is explaining. I feel like one of those good students at school sitting in the first row with the hand continuesly up.
- Mrs. Yuyu, Mrs. Yuyu, I have a question: were the Mongolian really the bad guys of the movie?
Anyway, at one in the afternoon -six hours after departure- we finally arrive to the Great Wall -main objective of the tour- and Yuyu says:
- My dear friends, now you have two hours to walk along the Great Wall, remember that we still need to visit a tea house on the way back to Beijing, so I recommend that you take the cable car up to the top of the mountain -170 Chinese Yuan- to optimize your time. And the most important thing: don’t go to Mongolia. Remember always to walk same way up and same way down. Repeat with me: same way up, same way down...
In summary, and now seriously, the Great Wall is an impressive and breathtaking experience. Over 8000km of wall built by persons? There we were, my new really nice friends from the guided tour and this españolito, finally taking pictures like kids, as if there would be no tomorrow, which can indeed be dangerous, because some stretches of the Great Wall are actually quite steep. What a memorable fun day!
Please have a look and I see you all very soon, my dearest surreal readers, in Shanghai.
To be continued
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| Ming |
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| Ming tombs |
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