Blogging news

Today was a big day for me and the blog.

First, I finally figured out how to change my blogger from Chinese to English. Now I have at least a little clue what I am doing here.

Secondly, since I have been in China, I have been able to post to my blog and to see that my posts were successful, but I have not been able to actually view my blog. Apparently, the Great Firewall of China is against me. Today I found a proxy server that will let me see my blog! But so far I can't figure out how to see comments people post to my blog. This was a long way of saying, I don't know what people are writing but don't take offense if you post something meriting a response and it takes me a while to get back to you. It's probably because I haven't figured out how to see what you wrote.

Finally, I want to define a little more clearly how I am thinking about this blog and this summer.

Even though I will get to travel a good bit this summer, I think my adventures will be fairly business-focused, and as such, the blog may be even more boring than you might expect from me. Last summer - La Gran Aventura - was definitely just about having fun and exploring personal interests, like learning Spanish and drinking Pisco Sours. This summer, I have two jobs and a definite focus on better understanding business in India and China. For example, I took a detour on Saturday to visit a mall and a Wal-mart Supercenter (well, an attempted detour actually as I got lost and gave up on the Wal-mart, but you get the point). Business dorks may find these posts more interesting but others may not. Just setting expectations.

Finally, three pictures. The first two are of the Great Wall - one showing me extremely hot, and the other of the first-class cable car system. The last one has some advice for us all.

Great Wall

It is pretty exciting to be only 3 days into the summer and to have already had a day that you know you will never forget.

This morning I got up at 5:45, picked up a to-go bag of dumplings to go along with my 3 clifbars, and headed out to the Great Wall. I chose to avoid the most common tourist route and instead took the Happy Fun Times Extreme Adventure Great Wall Tour, starring myself as the sweaty, out-of-breath American.

Four hours later, I made it by foot, subway, and very old bus to a fairly remote section of the wall called Simatai. There were probably only 100 tourists in this area of the wall, which is pretty good for a summer Saturday. The sections of the wall closest to Beijing are supposedly overrun this time of year.

A few fun facts I learned (or think I understood) about the wall:
- Mostly built in the Ming Dynasty around the 1300s - my section was built in the 1370s.
- The wall is over 1,200 miles long but is not one continuous piece, there are numerous sections which are not connected everywhere
- In the end, the wall didn't work. The Mongols eventually went around it under Genghis Khan (I think the military history of walls has proved extremely ineffective, all the way to today)

Hiking along the wall was much harder than I anticipated. First, there was a 30 minute cable-car ride (the most poorly constructed cable car I can imagine) from the parking lot to mid-mountain. Then about 20 minutes of hiking straight uiphill. Then, the wall itself. IT was really amazing - ran right on top of a stunning mountain ridge line. I hiked 12 watchtowers long. I don't know exactly how far that is, but I know it was very hot and tiring. But really, really cool. Lots of steep, uneven steps up and down and beautiful views all around the countryside. Same as Machu Picchu, but different.