Imagethief

You can’t come to Beijing and not see the Great Wall. It would be like going to Cairo and skipping the pyramids. People would think you had some kind of brain parasite. The Great Wall is one of the world’s iconic monuments, and you have to go see it because, well, it’s one of the world’s iconic monuments.

Despite the “icon” status and my susceptibility to the tourism vortex here in Beijing, it took me over a month to make a trip out to the Great Wall. I was getting plenty of entertainment from metropolitan Beijing and I didn’t want to make a trip with sixty other students, so I skipped the official school outing. I was simply inert.

Finally, my roommate, James, attained motivation (the college student equivalent of attaining enlightenment) and hired a driver for a day. James, I and James’ friend, Maurita, headed out to the Great Wall at Simatai.

From Beijing, there is no single spot at which people go see the wall. It’s 5,000 kilometers long in all, so you have some options. The most famous chunk of local wall is at Badaling, northwest of Beijing. The Badaling Wall has been largely rebuilt and is destination number-one for the enormous tour groups that trek out by the busload. The main sign of tourist-trap danger at Badaling is the Badaling Expressway, a central line into the aorta of Chinese tourism.

Beside Badaling there are some lesser known, more spectacular, but less convenient sections of wall, such as Jinshanling, Mutianyu and Simatai.

Now, I am not writing this piece to drone on about the visual splendor of the Great Wall (Cháng Chéng, or “long city wall” in Chinese). You can go elsewhere for that if you want details. Briefly, I will tell you that the Simatai Great Wall is visually spectacular. It follows a steep mountain ridge, clinging precariously to the edge of a precipice that overlooks amazingly scenic valleys on all sides. It is truly wondrous, and seems lifted directly from the imagination of JRR Tolkien. From the summit of Simatai you can watch the wall plummet down the ridge and ripple away for miles into Hebei province, toward Jinshanling. Gazing at the highest point of the wall from the foot of the mountain I thought to myself, am I glad I’m not the poor bastard who had to carry those rocks up there.

Mao himself, in a poetic flourish, is reported to have said, “Bú dào Cháng Chéng fei haohàn, bù chi jiaozi zhen yíhàn.” Translated for sentiment rather, than literal meaning, that comes across as: “If you haven’t seen the Great Wall and eaten Chinese dumplings, you’re a jackass.”

But enough of that. If you want more, buy a guidebook, or look at the photos in the Great Wall and August image galleries on this blog. What I do want to drone on about is the hawkers. They are the thing that I most remember about my trip to Simatai. If you are planning to go, I hope you benefit from my experience.

To get to the summit of the Simatai Great Wall, you can hike four hours up the length of the wall from the foot of the mountain. But unless you are some kind of brain damaged superman with hydraulic thighs, that is a dumb idea. Instead, pay a nominal 45 kuai to ride first a chairlift and then a cable operated mini-train which, between the two of them, get you about 75 percent of the way there. From there, a short, fifteen minute stagger up a series of brutal switchbacks puts you on the wall itself, along which you can easily stroll either up to the summit, or back down to the foot of the mountain.

The Simatai hawkers strike while your defenses are down. As you are climbing the final switchbacks you pass an innocent looking gaggle of aunties toting shoulder bags and jawing with each other. This is actually a queue, and the auntie at the head of the line will peel off and shadow you. In your winded state, teetering on the threshold of cardiac arrest, you don’t notice this. Once you’re up on the wall auntie will insinuate herself into your group. In Pidgin English she’ll point out interesting sights, fuss over you to mind your step on the rough parts and tell you where you’re friends are when you lose sight of them. Then the sales pitch will start, and by this time it’s too late.

These hawker aunties are the remoras of the human world. You cannot shake them. They have learned through long years of practice every possible technique to wring dollars from tourists. Your auntie will follow you for your entire hike. Like a bad credit record, she will never quite go away. She will hover on the edge of your vision. She will insert herself into your quiet moments of contemplation. She will shadow you relentlessly despite your every duck and weave, following the trail of sweat you leave behind. Her goal is to sell you postcards and the Great Wall picture book. She is like the Terminator. She will never, ever give up until you are dead, or buy something. Whichever comes first.

The first time I went to Simatai our auntie followed us up and down for, no exaggeration, three and a half hours. When we drifted too far away from her, she yelled for another nearby auntie to take over until she could catch up. Over the entire afternoon she repeatedly asked each of us to buy the book or the post cards, despite the fact that James told her up front that we would not buy anything. During the course of our walk the price of the Great Wall picture book dropped from 120 kuai to twenty. If you ever decide to buy it, use that information to your advantage.

As we neared the end of our walk the intensity of the pitch increased. It had become clear that we were hard cases, and it was time for the heavy artillery. Prices had plummeted to near rock bottom for the book, although the post cards were still steep at ten kuai. We were treated to, pleading, pouting, and, finally, the coup de grace. Our auntie whipped up a set of tears and explained to me, mournfully, “I have three children at home…”

By this time my heart had hardened to the size and consistency of a beer nut, and couldn’t have cared if she had sole custody of every orphan north of the Yangtze. I wasn’t buying jack. Maurita, bless her heart, caved in and bought the ten kuai pack of post cards. Her reward for this magnanimous gesture was an upbraiding: “I follow for three hours, you buy so little!” People have been horribly murdered with blunt objects for less.

The tactics employed by the lamprey women are not accidental. They are the product of a kind of natural selection process that, over time, has yielded the strategy most likely to harangue a sale from an exhausted tourist. On average, the net return from hassling a group of visitors for over three hours is clearly positive. Sooner or later, many people simply give in and buy something out of guilt, compassion, ignorance or plain old frustration. Many have been lured into conversation, the thin end of the manipulative wedge. A substantial number pay the opening price, or close to it. When my father went on a group tour to Simatai, a fellow tourist, who, apparently, was nearly as annoying as the hawkers, paid over 100 kuai for the book. Jackpot.

So when I returned to Simatai with my wife, some weeks after my first visit, I was determined that we not spend the entire day as a threesome. The moment we passed the staging area and our auntie peeled off to follow us, we told her in Mandarin, “We’re not going to buy anything. Please don’t waste your time. You’re better off following someone else.” She started to follow us anyway. We told her again that weren’t going to buy anything. She stopped.

Victory!

We should have known it was too easy. A couple of switchbacks later we look below us to see that auntie is quietly shadowing us the mountain. We accelerated. She was still behind us! This woman was the Freddy Krueger of China! When we reached the wall, she caught up with us, and the sales pitch began. “You want Great Wall book?”

“No!” we said. “We really don’t want to buy anything.” We started walking for the summit. She kept following us.

We switched to the contingency tactic: The Cold Shoulder. This demands a level of ruthlessness that is difficult even for me, smacking as it does of colonial racial superiority. But, having tried the advanced warning and the polite approach, there was no alternative. The secret is to completely pretend auntie doesn’t exist. You must maintain your aloofness no matter what she does. Whether she get gets in your way, plucks your sleeve, reveals that you are actually distant relations by marriage, or sets herself on fire and pleads with you to douse the flames you must not acknowledge her existence in any way. It is brutal, but it works. Twenty minutes later, auntie gave up and moved to a more productive group of tourists. My wife and I explored the wall as a couple for a further two and a half hours, free of our shadow.

I really do recommend you visit the Great Wall, and I give high marks to Simatai. In order that you should have the best possible tourism experience at Simatai, here is some advice. It is worth what you have paid for it.

1)      Don’t go in a group tour. Go with a small group of friends, ideally in a private car you hire from Beijing. From Beijing, cars can be hired out for a day for about 400 kuai. The driver will take you Simatai and wait for you. In a small group you can control where and when you walk, and where you eat and stop in transit. Don’t eat at any of the places right around the parking lot. It’s a five minute drive to cheaper eats down the road.

2)      Leave early. Traffic around Beijing is a bitch, seven days a week. It’s two and a half hours to Simatai at the best of times. Plus, in summer you really want to minimize your mid-day walking.

3)      Bring a hat, a small umbrella, some fruit or other energy-rich snacks and carry at least a liter of water per person. On the wall a small bottle of water goes for 10 kuai. In a supermarket a big bottle is two kuai. Do the math.

4)      At Simatai there are no bathrooms on the wall itself. Plan accordingly.

5)      Don’t be noble. Take the chairlift and mini train. It’s relatively cheap and will keep you from dying. The chairlift ride is quite pleasant. Buy one-way tickets and walk down the wall. Your round-trip from the parking lot will be 3-4 hours.

6)      Don’t buy anything from the aunties unless you really want to. They are not starving to death if they can shadow you for three hours. The tears are an act. They are also clearly syndicated by someone. If you must buy the postcards or the book, bargain ruthlessly. You are aiming for about 20% of their opening price. Don’t be scared to walk away. The price will drop. Trust me.

7)      If you have a few spare moments and speak any Chinese, make the time to talk to the peasant workers who are restoring the wall. I spent a merry half hour with them the first time I was at Simatai. They were clearly delighted that a tourist had taken interest in what they were doing. They explained their work, asked a lot of questions about me, mugged for the camera, hospitably gave me a supremely nasty Huang Guo Shu cigarette, and taught me to make squawky noises with a blade of grass. I already knew how to do that, but it was fun watching them demonstrate and it really pissed off a pair of arrogant American backpackers.

8)      Be mentally prepared to be harangued every time you walk past the cloud of souvenir sellers by the main ticket counter. They get you on the way in and the way out.

Also, as a public service, I have transcribed below the exact text of an English language tourist advisory sign from the Simatai great wall. It needs little embellishment.

Tourists:

1)      Please observer landscape order dont block the road and exit buy tickets in turn and eiver the landscape after they be checked pay attention to keep your counterfoils so as to be checked again by the pstaff meabers.

2)      Please observe discipline and obey the law don’t scuffle create a disturbance do superstition and other unlawful activities for your safety please don’t stay overnigh-tin the great wall.

3)      Please observe social morality respect the olders take good care of the children and be self possessed please go sightseeing according to the landscape rules.

4)      Keep your own things well in order to avoi-d losting the-m dont spit and litter.

5)      Please take care of cultural relics plants and wild animals.

6)      Dont enter non-landscape areas carry inflammables and o-ther dangepous articles the landscape is fire prevention please pay attention to tne safe signc and follow the staff’s arr-ange otherwise you will accept the consequences yourself

Amen, brother.

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