Hu and Jo we salute you!
The day started like any other, an ignored 7:30am alarm call, arriving several hours later at 11am, forgetting to read the time of the last shuttle to the Great Wall, missing the last shuttle by 30minutes, sitting disappointed on the steps revelling in our laziness and deciding what else to do with the day, and the plan for our second try the next day.
“The guide book says if we had four people its only 400rmb a day to hire a taxi. We need to find two other people”, I said.
“hello, do you speak english?”
Bingo!
I look up to see two Asia men, one has just hit the other and they are both laughing hysterically at the stupidity of asking us if we speak English.
“Yes, a little I reply” making the international symbol for a little with my thumb and index finger.
“Ah okay, we would like to go to the great wall, do you know which route we have to take?”
(If I was an expert on Great Wall travel information would I be sitting on a step holding a Great Wall map looking disappointed, 30mins after the last bus).
So after explaining to them that they like us are lazy, and too late, we tried to coax them into sharing a taxi between the four of us. They’re not keen. “But Chinese people will try to trick us, they try to steal things from your stomach!”
“You mean kidneys?”
“Yeah, yeah your kidneys, we heard stories before we came here about it.”
“Geez, Korean people are a little paranoid. Maybe in the past, but the Olympic Games is here in half a year I think they’ve progressed a little since the kidney stealing days of the past, maybe out in the middle of nowhere but in Beijing, in a registered texi, I’m pretty sure we’ll end the trip with both kidneys.”
Slowly after long negotiations with the taxi driver, many repetitions of exactly what we wanted we managed to convince the Koreans that it was safe to get into the car. The 1hr journey passed easily, spent bonding with Hu and Jo:
“Are you man and wife?”
“No, but we’re a couple”
“Ah, so are we (trying to hug Hu, both laughing). We met during Military service in Korea, we are macho men.”
“What job did you do during your Military Service?”
“We did paperwork”
“Oh, very macho paperwork I bet”
We discussed my love of Korean Cinema and Korean Electronics, what age you get married at in Korea (usually around thirty), that Korea is nothing like China in a 100 and one ways that make it definitely better and explore the never ending depths of Korean Paranoia:
“You’re from England? Very Dangerous there, lots of racists. My friends were in Mcdonalds in London and people……threw trash at them. Not a safe place. People there look down on the yellow people. ”
“You’re from Germany? Oh, also very dangerous many hooligans there!”
I just hoped the Great Wall was still hooligan free or we’d have to hide the Koreans in the boot. Hu and Jo were hugely entertaining, taking nothing seriously, always laughing, joking and playing, it was like travelling to the Great Wall with two Labrador puppies. As the Great Wall came into site and we pulled into the car park there was a Korean car orgasm of oohs and aahs, which only increased as we began the climb up the wall. They entertained us all the way, if there was a tunnel they were running through it, they took photos every step both on the way up and down of them in a variety of poses - I’m superman, I’m a dog running on all fours, I’m muscle man, they had boundless energy and soon raced off well ahead of us taking photos at a rate of one memory card full a minute.
The wall was everything that we’d be told and more, stunning. The photos will describe it better than I could even try. I still had a fever, but tried valiantly to complete the ascent, not helped by having a really bad throat and cough, being a mouthbreather, having no breakfast, and being very lazy by nature. I was soon overtaken by an waddling, overweight, middle-aged woman as I lay flat out on my back frantically hunting for just a little more oxygen, Annett forcefeeding me cake. Annett graciously walked at my pace, pretending that she had more gears to walk faster, if she wasn’t such a good girlfriend and required to water and feed her wiltering plant.
As we neared the top Hu and Jo came bouncing back down. “We’ve been cheated!” they said angrily. “This is the not the Great Wall”. “Looks like it to me, its a wall, stretches as far as the eye can see and there’s a rabble of Mongolians trying to destroy it on that side.” “No it cant be it just stops up there, the taxi driver tried to cheat us”. We check the guide books, the wall should stop, Annett and I are not convinced anything is wrong but we had back down to the taxi. The Macho Men Koreans have raced ahead to declare war in the car park. Turns out this is the other Great Wall spot, not the main Badaling area where everyone goes. We confront the driver, who speaks no English, or Korean, or German, or Spanish which is all we have in our language arsenal, but we deduce that the driver wants another 50rmb (5eur) to go to Badaling as we spent two hours here already. Hu reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out not his kidney, but a mobile phone. He calls his friend who speaks Mandarin, recital of Korean War and Peace begins, minutes pass……Phone handed over to Taxi Driver, recital of Mandarin War and Peace begins, minutes pass……Taxi driver says well you have to pay. Annett fumes, I do my version of fuming (a slightly quizzical raise of the eyebrows), the Koreans who we later find out are the softest people on the planet and will do anything to avoid conflict want to pay. Annett and I refuse. Phone passes back to Hu, who discusses our refusal to pay again with his friend. Days and Weeks pass. Phone is passed back to driver. Year pass, I’m losing the will to live, a few more hairs and my patience, phone is handed back to Hu, minutes pass. We ask very clearly and strongly that the person on the phone tells the driver exactly this:
“You are trying to cheat us, we wont pay you a penny more, take us to Badaling or we’re getting the bus back to Beijing and you get nothing”. But we suspect after the no-conflict for Koreans chat that what ends up being given to the driver is
“Thank you for your kind and gracious offer Mr Taxi Driver sir, good day to you. Please hold whilst we discuss this tremendous opportunity for you to take some more of our money with our new international friends”.
Many minutes pass. We walk away. He follows. I give up, it’ll be dark if we don’t get moving soon, the Koreans would pay for our whole 5mnth holiday if we so much as asked and it avoided an argument, hell will have to freeze over before Annett will budge, I offer 30rmb which is less than 10% of the overall 300rmb fare and we got two extra hours for it, deal is done and we’re moving again.
We arrive at Badaling. Relations with the taxi driver have soured, he now wants 200rmb of the 330rmb upfront before he will drive us back to Beijing in-case we don’t come back down from the wall to his taxi. I’m going to throw myself off the damn wall, ideally I’ll land on his stupid taxi. The Koreans will happily pay. Annett and I make you’ll have to pry it out of our cold dead hands look and he settles for Jo’s jumper as a partial deposit. Why he thinks I’ve a strong enough emotional attachment to Jo’s jumper that would stop me getting the bus back I don’t know, but the deal is done and we can go. Relieved we get out of the car, angry at the Taxi Driver. Then I turn and Jo’s slipping him a 10rmb note as a tip, presumably as he is feeling guilty at not giving him his trousers as well.
The view is much better at Badaling, the wall sweeps across the mountain side as far as the eye can see, but there’s also about 800x as many people, a Starbucks, hawkers a-go-go, and luckily as I was physically dead from the climb at the last area - a cable car.
We did return to the taxi, tired and awaiting the next chapter in the Great Wall Taxi Korean Fiasco. But the journey back was relatively smooth and quiet, we pass the time with such culturally nourishing topics as
“This is a strange question, but we use this word a lot in Korea, what is the correct way to pronounce shit?”
“shit”
“Ah, shit!” (Both repeat it a few times)
“What is it in Korea?”
Shebar (Shebarrr). The r adds emphasis. (We practice)
Its Schiesse in Germany. (Both repeat it a few times) . Oh I like that, sounds powerful (Repeating it again).
On arriving back I pay, the taxi driver then gives me 5rmb back that I shouldn’t have and I wonder if the whole “you have to pay me more now” was not a con but a loss in translation. Either way we got to the Great Wall despite our laziness and had great fun with our new Korean friends and kept both kidneys, which feels like success at that point.
Here are some pics from the Great Wall
Another gem.