Bananas, babies, and beasting the Wall - Nech does Beijing

Hi all. Sorry for the long delay. As I’ve told some of you, I’ve been quite busy with a little homework, a lot of trip planning, and an inordinate amount of time spent organizing housing for next semester (living with my buddy Ayal Robkin on 41st and Spruce) and next year (with Mordechai, Danny, Brian, Ben, Ross, Jon, Jesse, and Ariel in 318 S 42nd). During my last Astrophysics lecture, we finally got together in an eight-person group gchat to iron out some final details.

Enjoy the many (slightly out of order) pictures (warning: doesn't work perfectly on google chrome.  also, any of the captions are greg's work, not mine).

Upon touching down in Beijing, Brian and I briefly parted from our group in order to celebrate Sebastian’s birthday with him and Johann at a club called something Banana. Or Banana something. We didn’t really know. So we found ourselves after much confusion at Coco Banana. “This is probably it; right, Brian?” “There can’t be that many Banana clubs in Beijing.” After a fruitless search in the dark, we approached an older white guy to ask for info. Noticing Brian’s sweatshirt, he shouted, “Wharton? USC!” and held out his fist for props. Amused, Brian asked if he knew of another Banana club. “Club Banana? That’s a gay club!”

He was clearly very drunk, so we decided to try to find it anyway.

Luckily, there was a giant sign for a GT Club Banana right outside, and we eventually persuaded a taxi driver to take us there. After again failing to find our boys, we gave up and danced away.

The next morning I found Sebastian. “So which club were you in?” “GT Club Banana.”

We were soon marching through Tianammen Square wearing our Wharton and U Wisconsin sweatshirts proudly before heading into the Forbidden City.

Though we enjoyed the beautiful architecture and journeys back into ancient emperors’ lives, we enjoyed even more the austere buildings’ names. Behind the Palace of Supreme Harmony stood the Palace of Medium Harmony and then the Hall of Preserving Harmony. The three-year-old emperors had fun in the Hall of Arts and Crafts and Hall of Toys while the older ones went left to the Hall of Martial Victory or right to Hall of Literary Glory; Bob refused to enter the Hall of Abstinence. Later on in the trip we encountered the Temple of Excessive Moisture.

We spent the night riding bikes through quiet alleys and walking alongside a
picturesque lake, chilling in dive bars and crashing a local Halloween party.

We escaped the city smoke the next day with a trip to the stunning Summer Palace, a historic royal retreat that puts Camp David to shame. We then hopped over to the glorious Olympic stadiums where we found ourselves to be nearly as big an attraction as the Bird’s Nest – Chinese tourists literally lined up to take pictures with us.

Particularly cute were a little boy who would hide behind people whenever we looked at him (he was trying to take pictures of us from a distance) and a super-cute baby dressed in a tiger suit who is probably now scarred for life after his mom tried to make him pose with us for a picture. Way too many vanilla faces for that little man.

At night we bargained down polo shirts and communist hats at the city’s historic Silk Market and got a taste of Beijing’s signature Peking Duck.

Our final task now remained – camping illegally on the Great Wall at Simatai. Armed with sleeping bags, tents, bagels, and furry communist hats, we got to the wall just before sundown, upset that the cable car had closed and that we would have to walk all the way up the mountain before even starting our wall hike. Our driver told us later that our timing was perfect; “The guards would have stopped you when they saw your gear; they just happened to be on a break

when you entered.” We raced up and pushed ourselves as far away from the entrance as we could climb in order to best escape the police. The night provided a beautiful sunset and a starry sky before we settled in the tents we had erected earlier in hope of some rest.

We had brought a two-person tent, one-person tent, and five sleeping bags for me, Brian, Greg, Vivian, and Mark. Then Bob decided to sleep on the wall too, and joined me and Brian in the one-person tent. One of us slept very well, stretching out and snoring loudly. I was in the middle and didn’t even have enough room to put my feet down next to each other or lie on my back. Midway through the night I heard Bob, “Hey Nech, you sleep at all?” “Nope.” “Think it’ll help if we switch positions?”

It didn’t.

We got out of the tent at 5 AM in order to see sunrise over the wall. Frozen, we retreated. An hour later we ventured out again, packed up, and hiked to the end of our wall section with time to spare.

Sixteen hours later I put my very own Great Wall stone on my bookshelf at UST.

If I have time, check back next week or this week for Nech does Qingyuan or Nech does Sichuan (or both).