"He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man." - Mao Tse-Tung
"I will tell you this, Lacy, these ancients knew a secret I should give all I possess to secure. They knew their life's meridian, and I still search mine." - John Fowles
Looking back, it's always been accepted that I was born twice.
My mother and I called it my Chinese birthday. A tradition born of an error in translation, misinterpreting the traditional Chinese belief that children are one year old when they are born. And rather than celebrate my birthday en masse at New Year's, as the other half of that Far Eastern custom would go, the running joke for my mom and I would be an additional phone call, card or email with cutesy quotation marks celebrating the date in 1982 on which I was conceived. 11/11.
It grew into a lucky number, my first pick for a jersey in volleyball and basketball, and later into something talismanic, protectorate, comforting. A promise even in the face of despair that everything would be okay. My grandfather's badge number in the SFPD, the exact minute my mother pulled our rental car into my paternal grandmother's driveway the first time I ever met her, the date in 2009 that my father died. #1111, 11:11, 11/11.
Fitting then that I should type these words from China in November, the 11th month of 2011. A coincidence I didn't realize until weeks after I jumped at an irresistible deal I saw on Twitter: a $459 round trip ticket to Beijing. The symbolism of visiting China during that month and year didn't hit me until I was informing my family about it in person, breaking the news that their impulsive, crazy, prodigal son that had yet to grow up was still impulsive, crazy, and had yet to grow up.
Really it was just somewhere to go. A nails-biting-into-walls rebellion as I was being dragged away from a waning 2011. An additional cache of memories to add to the year of my lucky number. One more adventure in the year of the bulls. But the full extent of the numerology of it all didn't sink in until tonight. Until I closed my eyes and saw myself staring up solemn-faced and doe-eyed at the summit directly above. Not that 11 was charmed for me, but why that number specifically was so fitting for this one place on Earth. For this precise moment in my life.
Tuesday I scrambled all throughout central Beijing, Tiananmen Square at dawn for the ceremonial Communist Army march out the Gate of Heavenly Peace and morning flag raising, idled through a queue of thousands for Mao's mausoleum, savored traditional Peking Duck at a revered family-run restaurant in a tiny, near-impossible to find back alley, was dwarfed in the indulgently massive Great Hall of the People, paced around the formerly taboo grounds of the Forbidden City, fought biting gusts of winter night air around the illuminated Water Cube and Bird's Nest stadiums of the 2008 Olympics. Wednesday I dealt with logistics for a weekend in Pingyao before I scrambled to the out-of-the-way 798 Arts District and the factory complex-turned-hotbed for contemporary art, deciphered as much Mandarin as I could to find an underground transport depot, sat with my 30 pound backpack on my lap and a heater raging mercilessly against my trapped leg on an overflowing 2 hour bus ride to the outskirts of Beijing, bounced around in the seatbelt-less backseat of a taxi van as it wove along mountain pass roads, driving in the wrong lane around blind curves to pass slower trucks, the stuttery strobe of its high beams the only warning oncoming traffic would have to keep from crashing into us head-on.
And tomorrow. Tomorrow I just walk along a wall. And in doing so, by definition cross that which divides. A monument to separation, or for me, transition. Here (by destiny, or the complex scheme of God, or just the pulse of the world) to achieve the Shakespearean climax. One side of my life on one side of the wall. A day to walk along it. And one side of my life to begin on the other side. Adding the weight of my size 13 New Balances to the pressure of the centuries, the cargo of a billion lives. Standing in the middle of two lives- both rich, both charmed. One of promise, one of fruition. The inherent simple beauty of 11. Or even 11/11. The symmetry of the middle.
I sit on this bed a few miles from the Great Wall of China with an impossible to ignore peace of knowledge that this is it. That every girl I've dated is passing footnote to a love still to be. Every hour at work merely prologue to a position to soon be my career. The end of the ascent, of the antecedent, is tonight. And that my Rubicon is 2,500 years old. 5,500 miles long. And about to be crossed.
(written Wednesday, November 23, 2011.)
= = = =
The gloves probably save my life. Or keep my mind free from thinking of impending frostbite for the entire day. Black with a generic clip art golfer icon and the word "SPORT" stitched in red along the back, they're never something I'd wear if I cared about appearance, but today isn't really about self-image. I buy them along with raspberry/blueberry cream Oreos, a squat little can of Chinese Red Bull, and a bag of what looks like picante Chex cereal and I will later discover tastes like spicy uncooked Ramen noodles. I pay the 18 yuan (a little under $3) and add them to the stash in my backpack of apples, raw shelled peanuts, sweet muffins, and water already purchased from another small market next door, one also without visible signs of running electricity. Jackson, the only other person staying at my hostel and my trailmate for the Great Wall, buys a pack of plain Oreos and a lighter. Neither of us smoke, but neither of us wants to hike around isolated sections of the Great Wall in a northern China winter without instant access to the ability to make fire. I put on the thickly-lined fleece gloves and push past the hanging strips of thick clear plastic that serve as a door.
Twenty minutes later we reach the trail that lazily dissolves into one of the oldest surviving sections of the Great Wall, dating back to the Sixth Century, last restored in the Fourteenth. My right glove comes off a decent amount to take photos (though I later perfect the art of taking them with it on), or to dig in my pack for water or a cookie to continue my meandering breakfast. The first time my left glove comes off is to touch it. I place my fingertips reverently and proudly upon the rough stone of the Wall I stand upon, wondering what worker in what century placed that stone there, so that centuries, a millennium later it could form the path that I walk. We stop about an hour and a half into the hike to sit and eat inside one of the abandoned watchtowers. I look out over waves of mountains risen around us and eat a sweet apple made crisp by the November morning cold; Jackson's water has slivers of ice in it from the below freezing temperatures.
Four hours along the top of the Wall, we reach the Twenty-Four Window watchtower. In those four hours the two of us pass only one group of five people walking the other way. I offer a sheepish smile and a "Nihao ma?," the extent of my Mandarin expertise. It is after this tower that Jackson and I will have to temporarily leave the Wall. Just ahead is a zone of it known as Military Zero, and the barbed wire running along the Wall and more modern, recently-manned watchtowers raise our natural curiosity, but our logic holds us back. I turn away from the path ahead to the one I've left behind. An undulating river of stone switching atop the barren hills, miles of noodles come uncoiled. Pride joins beauty and eats my exhaustion. We just did that. A silent admiration from the precipice. Standing atop the highest summit in our panoramic view I look down, back at my abandoned path, my consummated meridian. Aware. Of everything. It's at this point I remind myself that today is Thursday. It's Thanksgiving. I turn and we continue on.
Our detour lasts an hour and a half as we cut through seemingly private land and corn fields dormant for the winter. We lose sight of the Wall, but not thought of it. We finally, anxiously, cut back toward a lesser marked pathway back along the base of the Wall while there is still barbed wire above. This continues for some time past narrower ledges until we find a shorter part of the Wall, some 15-18 feet high with enough bricks missing to form a path up its side. Jackson goes first as I remove the warmth of the gloves and shove them and my camera in my bag. My fingertips touch the stone again, with the same reverence as a few hours before but far more force, enough to support my weight. I look around, then up, and step into the first foothold, and I begin to scale the Great Wall of China.
A bit farther ahead we reach another choice. A sloped decayed staircase about 25 feet down and immediately right back up, with a pile of rubble and rocks at the bottom or next to that a direct pathway, a 20-some-foot bridge of mismatching bricks about 24 inches wide that carries one above the stairway to one side and above a 40 foot drop to the forest floor to the other. Our smiles last longer than our hesitation.
The Badaling section of the Great Wall, the closest to central Beijing, has a movie theater, photo-ops with people dressed in ancient Mongol costumes, and among its hundreds of food vendor and restaurant options are KFC and Starbucks. Mutianyu has a slide for tourists to ride a toboggan down to their waiting cars rather than take a staircase and a hanging cable car making endless loops for tourists that would rather not walk. At Gubeikou there is just the Wall. And you. An opportunity to meet an intrinsic part of myself for the first time, one that's been hiding in the remote Chinese countryside for my entire life. Conceited, but that's all I could ever want; to feel more like myself with every stride forward.
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