Today Julia's family hired a tour guide to take us to the Ming Tomb, the Great Wall, and other littler places in between. Then we ended the day at the Beijing Opera.
The Ming Tomb represents heaven and earth. Heaven is usually represented by a circle (which is the shape of the mound that covers the tomb), and earth is usually represented by a rectangle (which is the shape of the passageway up to the tomb) in Chinese architecture. That is why the Bird's Nest is round and the WaterCube is rectangular in the Olympic park. It was believed that when you visit the Ming Tomb, you leave Earth and go to heaven. So while we were "in heaven", we were able to explore the Ming Tomb. As we looked over the mound, I saw a phone tower on it
. Our tour guide said, "That phone tower is for calling the emperor because that way he could rule after death." Being without my morning cup of coffee, I must admit that I actually thought that someone from our era put the phone tower there as a tribute to the emperor. Obviously I'm rather useless without my coffee for it took me a while before I realized our tour guide was joking. When you "leave heaven" you have to enter earth in an appropriate fashion so that your whole being comes back safely. In order to do this, you must step through the gate (boys with your left foot and girls with your right foot) while yelling "wo huai lai le" (I have returned) really loudly. After we returned to earth, we experienced a "four star" bathroom before we got on the bus again. I'm not sure when those four stars were given, but I'm sure it was before the spiders moved in.
I can go on forever about the splendor and beauty of the Great Wall, but I will save you from hearing what I'm sure you have already heard elsewhere. What struck me the most about the Great Wall was the ironic peace. The wall was built for war, but it felt so peaceful to be there. Also, the steps were worn down (much like the steps in Old Main) so I felt like I was stepping into
history when I was climbing it. I imagined all the great and even common people whose feet have helped to wear away the stones: Olympic athletes, politicians, families, travelers from near and afar, soldiers, emperors, etc. It reminded me so much of the feeling I got going up the steps of Old Main when I imagined scholars, politicians, etc. walking the same steps as I did. The steps of the Great Wall are much harder to climb though, for as soon as you think you reached the tower that is the farthest up, you find another one. It doesn't help that the steps are not even and are pretty tall so that you are practically putting your knees to your chest as you climb them (if you are short like Abbie). Thus you have to take it one step at a time or you'll easily trip and fall. I can see why Chairman Mao said in one of his poems, "You are not a true hero unless you have reached the Great Wall". That poem was an ingenious bit of advertising (though unintentionally) because now everyone in China wants to go to the Great Wall just so that they can be a hero in the eyes of Chairman Mao.
During our time with the tour guide, he also took us to a bunch of littler places as well. He took us to a Jade factory, two pottery factories, and a tea service. Basically the idea is that we get tours of these places, and then we are supposed to spend an hour looking around their gift shops. Because we spend an hour in their gift shops, the tour company gets extra money from the factories. The stuff in these gift shops are high quality but rather expensive. However, I would not label these little trips scams. We learned a lot from our trips to the factory, even though it was a bit annoying to have to stay in the gift shop for longer than we wanted to.
After dinner in the hotel, Julia took us to the Beijing Opera. In the lobby they had a wonderful display of costumes from past shows that were absolutely amazing. Before the show we read a bit about the background of the story (translated by Julia into English), but it was not enough to understand what was going on. Unlike in other opera houses I've been to, there were no English subtitles on the big screens nor on the chairs in front of us. So Julia had to translate the entire time for us. Lucky for us, the Beijing Opera is sung really slowly so it was easy for Julia to keep us informed on what was going on. This style Opera is completely different from what I've heard before in Barcelona, Vienna, and Budapest. In Beijing the singers are praised for vibrating their voices in a way that is probably beautiful to someone more accustomed to that style. Also everything is completely symbolic down to the make up (the villain of the story always has a white face and the comedic characters have white noses). In all I though the opera was very interesting in the way it connects with Chinese history and culture, but I must admit that I am somewhat partial to the opera I saw in Vienna. I prefer the western singing style that is smoother and also the way they use the music to emphasize and exaggerate the the emotions.
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