父母在长城上 in Which my Mother is "Struck by Lightning"

Ok, we're back.  I know, it's been way too long, but there is much to talk about.  I'll start where we left off.  Tuesday morning we met my friends, one American and one Chinese, at a bus stop.  This gave my parents a chance to experience Beijing morning traffic.  My father was not overly impressed, and kept repeating that New York traffic was far worse.  That just made me thankful we weren't in New York.  We reached the stop around 10:00, and hopped on the bus, prepared for a 50 minute ride to the Badaling section of the Great Wall.  The ride proceeded without problems until about 10:30, when the sky suddenly started to get dark.  This was not your average "oh, it's going to storm" kind of dark.  This was a combination of air pollution and fog that made it appears as though we were going through a sort of pea soup.  Cars had to turn on their headlights, it was that dark.

This is what 11:00 AM looks like when you have rain and pollution.

As the bus waded through the toxic soup, my Chinese friend explained to me that this phenomenon is not uncommon in Beijing around July, but he had never seen it happen this early in June.  Oh, lucky us.  By the time we reached the wall it was spitting rain, so we were forced to buy some thin plastic ponchos.  Due to the less than ideal weather, we chose to take the cable car to the wall, forgoing the walk to the top.  Because this is China, however, the "cable cars" were actually individual open-top cars, with molded seats.

Only the most luxurious accommodations here at Badling.

Departure is a less than graceful affair.

In addition to offering no protection from the rain, we also encountered a phenomenon in which, due to the steepness of our ascent, all the water that collected in the foot wells quickly found its way into the back part of our little death traps, thereby soaking our butts with water.  Good times...

The face of terror....and a wet butt.

Once we reached the top we realized that the weather was not going to get any better.  The view from the wall looked like this.

Behold, China in all its beauty!

We quickly resolved to make the best of the trip.  We took what pictures we could, including some with Chinese tourists, who very much like to take pictures with foreigners.

This jolly outlook lasted till right about the time the sky started falling.  When we reached the end of the wall, about a 20 minute walk, the sky darkened, and it started raining cats and dogs. This was accompanied by some rather fierce lightning.  By the time we got to the cable cars (real ones this time) at the end of that section of wall, we determined that riding in metal boxes during a lightning storm was a poor idea, especially ones that are higher than everything around them.  By the time we decided to go back down in the butt soaking cars, it had started to hail.  I knew it had started hailing because I heard my mother's loud declarations of "Ow!" every couple of seconds.  I, of course, was appropriately stoic.  This wasn't your normal just-this-side-of-snow kind of hail, this hail was about the size of a big marble, and almost as hard.  I soon found out that my friend Chunsen had never seen hail before in his whole life.  Speaking of Chunsen, he advised me to turn off my phone, as it might lead to me getting struck by lightning.  Of course, this was said while he, all 6'2" of him, was holding an umbrella while walking on the tallest part of the wall.  To each his own.  We quickly sought refuge in the towers that are placed throughout the wall.  As we entered, lightning struck what couldn't have been more than 200 meters from us, causing Chunsen to look like he was going to soil his pants.  

We were far from alone.

My friends, Nick and Chunsen, soon after Chunsen saw his life flash before his eyes.

Not the sunny picture on the Great Wall that I was hoping to take, but it will do.

My mother also insists that she felt a strong electrical shock come through her hand as it rested on the tower wall.  She said it felt like sticking her hand in an outlet.  I tend to believe her, thought the whole "struck by lightning" thing is bit of an exaggeration.  Once we determined that the hail had stopped, and the rain wasn't going to, we started walking back to the butt soaking cars.  This trip was extended by the fact that we passed by them on our first attempt, briefly leading us to believe that we had trapped on the Great Wall in a lightning storm.  Thankfully (I guess?) we finally found our way back the station.  The way down was even more terrifying than the way up, because the only thing keeping our train of cars, about twenty in all, from careening down the mountain side was a single man with hand brakes, brakes that I could smell overheating on the way down.  

Once we reached the bottom, we took the pictures you see above, mostly to celebrate the fact that we are still alive.  I can't say that it was as pretty as the other two times I went to the Wall, but it was definitely more interesting.  As my mother said, most peoples trips to the Great Wall aren't nearly as exciting.

That night, after a long, wet bus ride home, we returned to the hotel and then met my friends for dinner.  We went to a place called Heaven Supermarket, which is actually a bar and liquor store that also sells Mexican food.  It is especially attractive to me because of its abundant and relatively cheap supply of imported beer.  Not to mention the Bentley dealership right across the street.

My friends, Chunsen and Donni, complete with Bentley dealership in the background.

It was a much more relaxing experience than the wall, to be sure.  That night, we returned to the hotel for a nightcap in the bar.  I decided I needed a change of pace, so I decided to forgo the scotch from the night before in favor of a nice Mai Tai.

Not the manliest choice, but, hey, I earned it.