Buy a post card or I will push you down the steps

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Walking down the Great Wall of China with 1,000 other tourists

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Today we went to the Great Wall of China. Our bus was led by a police car with flashing lights the whole way to the wall. Police escorts in China are reserved for prisoners and for anyone willing to pay for an escort. To prove they were earning their money, the police car occasionally turned on the siren.

Along the way in wall to wall traffic (the police car did not move many cars out of the way) we learned that to own a dog in Beijing one must pay a special tax of $190 per year. This is about 2 month’s wages for the average city worker. I also found that there are not many birds in Beijing. No pigeons etc. Either they are eaten or pollute too much. Chinese from the days of the emperors have tried to eliminate birds. They have succeeded.

The wall section that we saw was located in the mountains about 25 miles north of Beijing. The ride took 2 hours even with our police escort. When we got to the wall, we took a gondola ride up to the highest watch tower located on a peak (4,500 feet). My wife decided to take the gondola back down but I chose to walk the steep mile down the wall back into town. Because I was wearing my Survivor tee shirt, I soon felt that I was participating in an immunity challenge. As I was walking down treacherous, uneven, and narrow steps dating from the 1400s with my eyes glued to where I was walking, sales people would continually come up to me. Sticking postcards or big picture albums in my face they would say that the item was only $20. How about $10? How much you want to pay? They were very aggressive. My challenge was to somehow keep going down the steps half blinded by whatever they were pushing at me.