The Great Wall, the world's oldest theme park
Endy M. Bayuni, The Jakarta Post, Beijing
"Your heart is beating too fast," a doctor at the herbal research medicine center tells me through an English translator.
"I just climbed up and down the Great Wall, and it nearly killed me. Could that be the reason my heartbeat is fast?" As usual, the skepticism in me comes out. Not without a reason: Only a few months ago, I got a clean bill of health after a general checkup in Jakarta. And I was not about to be cowed by some Chinese doctor who claims that he can tell me what is wrong with my health in just a few seconds.
"Your cholesterol is high, and you are overweight," he continues. My bulging stomach gives it away obviously, and the Peking duck I have been stuffing myself with these last three days must have raised the cholesterol level.
"You have too much fat tissue blocking the blood circulation. That is why your heart is beating too fast."
Now, that kind of doctor-speake really scares the pants off me. My skeptical barrier is not as strong as the Great Wall. I am listening, doc.
"Your tongue is off color. Your body heat is abnormal because your liver is not functioning fully."
When the doctor prescribes me with a couple of herbal medicines, I naturally ask: "Do you take credit cards?"
"Sure we do," the translator-cum-cashier gratefully takes the Visa card out of my hand.
The visit to the herbal medicine center is part of regular day-long tours that travel agencies in Beijing offer visitors. My group consisted of a dozen people of assorted nationalities who were whisked into a room on the second floor for an overview of Chinese medicine and its history. It is then followed with a free medical checkup, which consists of a doctor feeling up your pulse and inspecting your tongue. The doctors will then happily prescribe you with the proper medicines, which, coincidentally, conveniently and immediately available on the premises.
Welcome to the Great Wall tour. *
A visit to the Great Wall is a must for first time visitors to Beijing. I don't quite buy Chairman Mao's challenge that "you're not a real man until you get to the Great Wall" printed in most brochures offering such tours. But I had expected that a visit to this ancient structure, just one-hour's drive from Beijing, would take me through the long history of Chinese civilization and its many dynasties.
I have come here expecting a journey back in time and to have some sort of spiritual experience.
A visit to the Wall will also be helpful in understanding some of the contemporary thinking among Chinese leaders, Chinawatcher friends tell me.
The wall was built by the Qin dynasty to deter foreign aggression from the north. Subsequent dynasties added and refined the border, and built the watchtowers to detect incoming invaders. China's ancient and modern history is filled with stories about foreign invasions and occupation, from the Mongols, Manchurians, the Japanese and more recently the West. Because of that, suspicions, concerns and fears of foreigners remain strong among most Chinese, at least until recently.
The Great Wall is a symbol of both the greatness of Chinese civilization (and thus a source of pride) and also of their sentiments towards foreigners.
But with China's economy now opening up to the rest of the world, and with Beijing scheduled to host the Olympics in three years' time, xenophobic sentiments that were echoed in statements by its leaders in the recent past are rapidly losing ground in China.
Foreigners, including first time visitors like me, feel very much welcome in Beijing, perhaps even more so than they would in other Asian capitals. (Jakarta for one is not as friendly to foreigners, according to a South African friend.) Tourism is booming with this opening up, and xenophobia will soon no longer have a place in China.
But the rapid growth of China's economy and its tourism sector also inevitably means the commercialization of some of China's historical and cultural heritage. The Great Wall, unfortunately, is not spared this either.
A typical Great Wall tour today consists of not just a visit to the Great Wall itself, but also brief stops at a jade factory, cloissone factory, herbal research medicine center, and the Ming Tombs complex. They were brief stops, but long enough for tourists to decide whether or not to buy the items on display, and to haggle over prices. A quick traditional Chinese lunch is usually thrown into the package.
The Chinese are doing what most other nations are doing in selling their tourist sites: packaging as much as possible into one program. Such tours are popular for those with a day or two to spare in Beijing. And for 350 RMB (US$43) it's probably good value for money.
But, as with many package tours in other parts of the world, the commercialization of historical and cultural sites tends to deprive visitors of spiritual and emotional experiences that journeys like these are supposed to evoke.
My trip to the Great Wall, as well as to Tiananmen Square (including Chairman Mao's mausoleum) and the Forbidden City earlier, were all very interesting and fun, but they were devoid of the spiritual experience that I had hoped for when I set foot in Beijing.
*
Taking one of these package tours of the Great Wall, as one American member in my tour group describes it, is more like a trip to Disneyland. Our tour takes us to the Badaling Great Wall, the nearest to Beijing, and thus, the most commercially exploited.
Souvenir vendors greet you as soon as you arrive at the location. Before you buy your entrance tickets, there are bears, confined to their places a safe distance away, to entertain you.
But it is the sliding cars taking you up the hill before you begin your climb that reminds you the most that you are in a theme park rather than a historical site. The cars come in different colors. Getting into one, you need to go through a turnstile and navigate your way through steel structures set up to prevent people jumping ahead of you.
For the physically challenged, there is always the cable car that takes you to one of the peaks of the walls, allowing you to enjoy the vista without so much as a struggle. (Now I know why Chairman Mao says you're not a real man until ...)
The wet weather serves as another distraction in this tour.
"You're lucky today," our Chinese guide tells us. "The group yesterday suffered from severe heat and humidity." He buys us plastic raincoats, and a horrified American tourist next to me reacted: "I'm not putting one of those thrash bags on me."
Once we disembark from the sliding cars, the climbing begins.
Our guide says the goal is to reach the peak of the Badaling. And we have 90 minutes to go up and then come back down.
In parts of the Great Wall, we have to climb very steep steps. In others, the floor is ascending and the wet surface is unhelpful. And the fact that there are hundreds (and probably even thousands) just like you struggling up and down at the same time makes the climbing even more challenging.
One really needs to be in good shape to scale up and the down the Great Wall. Between the struggle for the next step, the pushing and shoving with other tourists, and catching your breath every now and then, it is easy to see why many people lose sight of why they are there in the first place.
I manage to catch a glimpse of the dramatic panorama from one of the watchtowers: the green hills around us, the other parts of the Great Wall in distant mountains, and, wait a minute, look at those foreign invaders?: Yes, tourists in cable cars.
Reaching the peak of Badaling, after such a struggle, was quite an achievement for a man of 90 kilograms with wobbly legs, but such a feat quickly turns into an anticlimax. Greeting you at the top are more vendors, selling t-shirts and bronze plaques that say you have reached the top of Badaling Wall. If you have five minutes to spare, they can engrave your name in the plaque for no extra charge. Even the amateur photographers are doing brisk business, although most tourists come equipped with their own small digital cameras.
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"You've been cheated," a Chinese friend of mine tells me on my return to Beijing when she hears about my purchase of the Chinese herbal medicine during the tour.
I guess part of being a tourist is to be ripped off from time to time. But then, I am taking the herbal medicine home.
Beijingers of course don't go to Badaling. There are other parts of the Great Wall some further distance from the city where apparently you can truly absorb the greatness of its architecture, the role it played in subsequent Chinese dynasties since the 13th century, and the glory of Chinese civilization.
But for a first and short visit to Beijing, scaling Badaling is not so bad. The package tour was fun and interesting, at least for the money you pay.
Next time (and no doubt there is going to be a next time) I should give myself a little more time and go for the more challenging and lesser visited parts of the Great Wall and get that spiritual experience I was looking for. Before commerce takes them over.