This IS the wake! A music video for the services. Carefree Highway by Gordon Lightfoot. Seemed appropriate. Lots of cacti in it too.

Also, the line in the song “Feel like I’m winning when I’m losing again” pretty much sums up our status with the Democratic Leadersheep, eh?

OT, Reporting from Beijing.

As EW predicted, today we saw the Badaling section of the Great Wall, a most amazing sight. It crawls along rough mountain peaks, following the top of the ridges, and in places is so steep that it is easier to walk on tip-toe, as if you were climbing steps instead of walking up a ramp, and then there are the stair portions, very steep. There are tons of tourists from everywhere, but the crowd was predominately Chinese. There was also a high school band from Londonderry, NH, playing very well, and with tons of percussion, which reverberated up the hills.

Then we saw the Ming Tomb of Shenzhou, also known as Wanli Emperor, or the Lazy Emperor, one of the last of the Ming Dynasty. Tombs were built on a grand scale, this one, one of the few which has been thoroughly excavated. It seems not to have been raided, possibly because of a system of closing the doors that locked them from the inside. It sounded like something from Indiana Jones when our guide explained it.

The burial chambers were built from stone and brick, and possibly marble. The architecture is romanesque, with very visible keystones in the arches, and the roofs are barrel vaulted. This technique was out of date in Europe at the time of the construction of the tomb, around 1620. This brought to mind the general state of older Chinese architecture. All of the main buildings at the Forbidden City and most of the buildings from that era are simple post and beam, with the occasional romanesque structure built atop the beams. Apparently, there was no shortage of trees for this kind of construction. At the Temple of Heaven, there are 12 piers of sandalwood trees, which our guide said were each manufactured from a single tree.

The Great Wall is an enormous feat, but in terms of architecture, it doesn’t compare with the Roman Aqueduct system, which was a real engineering feat. I have seen the Pont du Gard at Uzes, France, and it is easily equivalent to this wall.

I have been saying that you can feel the energy of these people, everywhere you look, and it is so hard to imagine the failure to emerge more quickly from feudalism. But when you see the paucity of imagination in the architecture, and the strength of the cultural imperatives of keeping things the same, it is easier to understand.

Last night we went to a shopping area, the Wangfujiang Road, not far from our hotel, where there is an enormous book store, packed with patrons, many sitting on the floor reading. there is a large section on accounting, maybe ten double rows of books, and a section of two rows on the lottery. One of the things both our guides have discussed is “luck”, and various talismans, and the effects of various natural substances, like teas, which are good for what ails you. Everything is discussed in these terms, which no doubt explains why people might take a book on the lottery seriously.

This conflict, between the folk stories that have guided these people for centuries, and the western drive towards capitalism, is fascinating to hear, and I am glad we have the guides, both of whom seem to embody the contrasts.

Loo Hoo asked on a previous thread about the food. We eat breakfast at the hotel, where we have a choice of Chinese and Western food. The Chinese eat the same things at all meals, as far as I can tell, although there isn’t any roast meat at breakfast, which seems to be mostly dumplings and vegetables. There are hard-boiled and preserved eggs, which are very tasty, very fresh, and rice or noodles.

We had a wonderful dumpling feast in Xi’an at Da Feng Chang’s, beautifully crafted dim sum, including my personal favorite, a walnut stuffed walnut shaped and walnut colored dumpling.

We tend to eat at the local places instead of the ubiquitous KFC and McDonalds. The owners speak very little English, so we carry a phrase book and between pointing, trying to speak Mandarin with our American voices, and pointing at pictures in the menu, we are able to get along nicely. We ate bamboo shoots and mustard greens, and sweet and sour barbecued short ribs one night, with a nice bottle of beer, and another night, we had fried mutton and fried chicken bits, with rice and “Chinese Cabbage” with pork sauce (this wasn’t a good combination, too much fried food). We have enjoyed noodles and dumplings and similar stuff, much like what you would get in a Chinese restaurant at home, but this is somehow better.

Long report, but, what the heck, that’s what scroll is for.