Saturday morning, along with my friend Kyan and his coworkers, I hopped in a van for a day trip to a nearby (2 hr drive) cave. Well, 2 hr drives in China are never actually 2 hrs, closer to 3 and involving many winding mountain roads. The views would have been really pretty had they not been obscured by smog and fog. Upon arrival, we trekked up some stairs and waited in a packed room just outside the cave for a tour guide. Peter (one of the guys in my group) and I were the only 2 westerners on the tour. The tour was given by a young girl that screamed into a megaphone in Chinese the whole tour. Needless to say, I did not catch much of what she was saying. The cave was underwhelming at best. It was really big, and allegedly millions of years old, but it had been subjected to neon and LED lights placed throughout, detracting from the authenticity of the experience.
After the cave, we went to lunch en route to the Great Wall. We had lunch at a very traditional chinese restaurant. There was a picture of a deer on the menu, and one of my group members ordered donkey meat. It looked like sausage and apparently was extremely processed and not good; subpar by donkey meat standards. I stuck with mushrooms and onions. The menu was nearly 10 pages long, so there is no telling what other delightful things were available.
After lunch, I made my first venture to the Great Wall. I am going this weekend to a much more remote section of wall for a camping trip, but on Saturday we did about an hour hike and got some good views. The people watching was also pretty spectacular: several women in heels, a lady in a see through lace top and green spandex capris, and old chinese men with their shirts lifted over their belly. Men literally walk around town like that, and it's not uncommon to see old men walking around without shirts on.
So on a scale from 1-10, 1 being boring and 10 being great, that wall looks like a 9. The caves are a 10.
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