'They are from this area. They know the area well, and they are here to help you. Remember to give them what you think is appropriate. If you don't want anything from them, ok. Just give them what is appropriate for what you used.' That said, again, and van stopped, I swung open the side door and leaped out, nearly onto an old woman. Within minutes, they had us separated from one another. We paired off: one unsuspecting, slightly confused young tourist to one coughing, hunched-over, non-English speaking woman. We walked in two lines into the trees. Pushing and shoving an old woman, I tried to jockey for position next to my friend. Looking out for Matt's best interests as his self-proclaimed hike manager, she, however, unfortunately decided I was an inappropriate choice for hike companion.
We hiked up and up, accompanied by the coughs, hacks, wheezing, and labored breathing of the old women who were there to assist us. My guide lost her balance momentarily and almost fell off the path. I steadied her. I wonder if she noted the irony of the situation as I helped her back onto the path. I certainly did. And I also noted the tragedy.
I wanted all these 'guides' to go away. I didn't want this strange lady tugging on my shirt and pointing to shrubs and bushes and trees and saying things in a language I didn't understand. I didn't want to force a smile, a laugh, a thank you. Nowhere in my fantasies of visiting the Great Wall of China am I slipping money into the palm of someone to get them to go away! I just wanted to walk in peace with my own thoughts to a place whose loneliness and grandness have captivated my imagination since I learned of it.
One time, in Japan, I took a tiny local train to a tiny local station in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. I walked and walked. The streets got smaller and smaller, the people fewer and fewer, the houses farther apart and the rice fields between them larger. There were no street signs, no vending machines. The sun began to set and I couldn't hear cars or people. I heard birds and bugs. I kept walking. I saw the spire of a temple rise up through the branches of a tree on my right. When I turned on my heel to head for it, the sound of crunching gravel crackled alone in the air. I walked through a gate and to the building's entryway. There was one pair of shoes on the ground. I took mine off and stepped up onto the wood and through the door. I saw a statue of Buddha. He loomed over me. He was wood, and he wasn't polished. He looked so old, so dusty, so comfortable in this little room of his in the middle of nowhere. I didn't see anyone else in the room, and I didn't hear anyone either. Whose shoes were those outside? Who else was here, in the middle of nowhere, with me and the Buddha? I walked to the Buddha.
'Wait please!' My head snapped around to the right. 'That will be 1,000 yen,' said the old wrinkled man in his blue guard uniform.
No. Money would not again taint my feeling of pure discovery. I wouldn't allow it to carelessly relegate my long and wondered journey to 'tourist trap.' I didn't blink when I paid 400 dollars for a flight to China. Nor did I blink when I paid 15 dollars for a van to drive me to the Great Wall, or five dollars to pay the hostel's finder's fee, or the five dollars for lunch. But, if I had to pay just one dollar at the top of that Wall, everything would be ruined. So I ran.
My guide didn't bother to follow. She couldn't. In that moment, no one could have caught me. I was running, and I was free. I put all the people in my group behind me and sprinted upward towards my moment. The base of a Wall tower appeared before me and I climbed up the steps, onto the top of the Wall.
No site or building has ever moved me as much as the Great Wall. It made me feel so small, in both time and space. It is so massive and unmoving and extends as far as the eye can see. How did people build this? The bricks are so old, so worn down. On either side of the wall is green. No roads, no buildings, no cars. Just a wall running and running. Unlike the temples of Japan, which are never more than a stone's throw away from a main city street, or equipped with a money collector, or the shrines and palaces of Beijing, which are completely overrun with people, the Wall allowed me to pause and feel something like history's gravity waves lapping slowly. The solitude and obdurate steadfastness of this monument was astounding. The Wall didn't give a shit about me, I could tell.
It was also the furthest away from home I've felt in my life. Japan resembled America in many ways, and my familiarity with the language and customs made Japan a second home for me. But this was different. Everything about the scenery and the moment screamed, 'Can you believe you are here? Can you believe that you saw this in a textbook years and years ago and now you are HERE?! You are in China!' I was overcome. I touched the rocks, leaned over the side, just stared and stared, and tried to take in everything about that moment. But absolutely everything else came in. Memories of middle school Japanese, high school Japanese, college Japanese, three different home-stay families in Japan, three years living and working in Japan. My life in Asia would be over in a week. I'd have to start over, back in America, so far away. So far away. And still the Wall didn't seem to care.
Intense and beautiful life moment concluded, I walked 15 steps to my left and bought a three dollar beer from a wrinkly old man sitting on a red plastic cooler. I think he was wearing jeans and a Yankees hat.
