We checked out of the hostel and kept our fingers lightly crossed that we were able to book tickets for tonight - just because otherwise we'd wasted our time doing the hateful bag-pack. We collected James and found a booth nearby the hostel where bookings could be made without having to infiltrate the train station and, athough the lady was very helpful, there was nothing available until tomorrow.
We weren't too bothered about the tickets because we hadn't had time to explore the city or it's walls properly. We were heading down a street dedicated entirely to the sale of calligraphy related items when we bumped into Henry, who James had met the night before and was from the south of England.
We needed to eat before we walked the 13km perimeter of the walls and discovered a street stall selling nice looking vegetable noodles that had actual vegetables in and not just soup. I think it may have been the best food we've eaten so far in China.
Ready for action, we headed up onto the wall. The wall was quite impressive in itself but the views that it offered were mostly unremarkable and usually pretty dull. We mostly saw the back-end of buildings, tatty gardens and wastegrounds.
Part of the way round, we found some statues of the terracotta warriors and had a great time dressing them up in our clothes and posing with them. There was a shop behind where they were stood and the ladies in there were very amused by our efforts. We spoke to them for a while and I tried on a traditional Chinese dress - it wasn't hard to put on but they still insisted on sending someone in to dress me. I was amazed that they found one to fit me but when I checked the label it was XXXL. I wish I'd got a photo though because really liked it, even though it had no chance of making it into my practical capsule wardrobe. There was a nice lady who worked there called Belinda and who taught be a little about Chinese marriages and encouraged me to get a wealthy husband. She also said that my nose was 'lovely' though so I think she might have been a bit crazy and I might hang fire before ditching Matt just yet.
Further around the wall we saw our first appealling section: the Lama Temple. It had very attractive buildings and some lovely gardens but we couldn't get off the wall to take a look at it. A map that we had also indicated that there was a big garden further round but it was called the 'Unambitious Garden' so we didn't hold out much hope for it. As it happened, it was so unambitous that we missed it altogether.
We did come across a Chinese driving school though and that was much more interesting. It was basically a patch of wasteground with a number of obstacles set up around it. It had ramps, home-made traffic cones and bizarrely, a burning pile of rubbish.
Our favourite bit was a section where the driver had to keep the wheels of one side of the vehicle on a kind of ledge. One bloke even took his hands off the wheel to wave them out of the window at us while driving along it. Not sure if he passed but judging by most drivers on the road, he probably got extra credit.
Henry was quite an interesting guy to speak to. He'd done some kind of finance related degree and after a year working, he'd decided that it wasn't for him and that he wanted to pursue his interest in Chinese culture and language.He had spent the last year in China learning Mandarin and teaching English. He'd planned to stay in China for longer but had met a French girl and fallen in love. She'd gone back to France and he was doing a few weeks travelling before heading to join her. He was planning on completing a Mastersin France, despite not really speaking the language. He figured that he had more Mandarin than most people on the course and could read French ok so would do alright. And for a measly £300 to complete the qualification, it was easier to do than in the UK. He really was a super bloke though and I enjoyed talking to him.
After one more short stop to marvel at the ear-splitting warbling of a singer at a small public gathering we could see through the arrow slits in the wall, we completed the wall walk.
There was a little exhibition of more traditional forms of entertainment at a stand in the courtyard and we spent a while 'coloured-cock kicking'. We've seen lots of people playing with these kind of shuttlecock things, which have coloured feathers on top and little weights to counterbalance them on the bottom, but we had no idea how hard they are to play with. We've seen everyone from young children to very old men standing in groups and playing keepy-up with them but we had very little control over the thing.
Next stop was the little restaurant near our hostel. It didn't look like much of a place and the chairs looked like people had been taking bites out of them but it came recommended and so we gave it a go. They had an 'English' menu which had so many hilarious translations on that it was hard to choose, though some sounded so disgusting that you'd never want to eat them. In the end we opted for 'Ants on a tree', which was, according to Henry, a more literal translation, and 'Customer get angry', which was actually the nicest dish they brought out so we're not sure where the name came from. James took lots of pictures of the menu so will have to remember to ask him to email them to me, along with the picture of him holding a terracotta warrior baby but with my head!
The evening's activity at the hostel was a quiz. We were quite looking forward to playing as a team and James was trying to fire everyone up by saying we were going to wipe the floor with them but then the hostel split us all up into teams that they'd made. My team got the pitiful score of 5, which reminded me of the time I went to the pub quiz with Heather and Julie and we ended up pretending we weren't teachers because we were doing so badly. We would have scored more highly if I could have persuaded a very insistent guy that cats aren't part of the Chinese zodiac and fish do have hearts. Matt's team also got 5 though and the winning team (James' of course!) only got 8 so it wasn't too shameful.
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