Hitting the Wall

We got up nice and early and headed to the street.  My Didi app worked and I ordered a Didi, but it didn't come.  So, we hailed yet another taxi.  He agreed to take us to the wall at the metered cost.  After we were a few blocks away, he told us that Mutianyu was in a traffic controlled area and required a two-way trip, so metering would not work.  He offered 1000 yuan round trip.  Considering the bus to the wall and only coming back to the Eagle's Nest would have been 300 yuan each and we would have been limited in time available, plus we were kind of captive, we agreed to it.  I feel confident that he gets a kick-back for a few restaurants and other things because he kept trying to get us to agree to lunch at some fish restaurant, shop at specific stores, etc.  But we did get to the wall.  We stopped to get our tickets.  We asked for the toboggan tickets, and they told us that you can only toboggan if you're under 60 years old.  I had heard that they let you go and don't check age, so I asked them to sell it to us anyway, and they did sell us the toboggan/sled tickets.  We were there early enough that it wasn't very busy, but there was already a line for the chair lift up.

A nice statue at the end of the line

This is the chair lift up

if this is the way you want to come down.

We made it up and walked around the wall for a bit.  I got several good shots, but I'm limiting myself to two since I've been there a few times before.

After we finished walking along the wall, we stood in line for the toboggan for about an hour or so.  When we finally made it to the sleds, we were carded.  They didn't let us ride and sent us around to the chair lifts to go back down.  There was no line for the chair lifts.  I was irritated, and the cabbie trying to get us to change our plans to things we didn't want to do didn't help.  He tried to tell us that the restaurant we were going to have Peking duck at was just a tourist trap and that it didn't taste good, though he didn't know what restaurant that was.  We told him we were going to have it in the hutong, and there are several places that sell Peking duck in the hutong.  He still tried to convince us to go shopping and do the fish restaurant.  I did finally convince him that we didn't want any of those things, but I offered him the opportunity to take us to the train station in the morning.  He agreed to do it for 200 yuan, which was ridiculous.  He gave lots of excuses why we should pay him 200 yuan, including that he lived far away, but taxi fare should be about 50 yuan.  I offered him 75.  He wouldn't take it and was upset that we didn't do any of the other stuff he wanted.  I did take pictures when we drove past the drum tower. 

I'm pretty sure he drove the long way around trying to talk us into the other stuff.  I got over my irritability when we got out of the cab and headed to the hutong where we got a really delicious Peking duck.  No explanation of the melding of the different foods, so it was a good thing I've done it before with a tourist explanation.  I was able to explain to my companion that Chinese food tries to balance warm energy with cool energy, like the yin and yang.  The proteins are warm energy while the raw vegetables are cool energy, and we put things in the pancake to balance the energies.  It was delicious!

There was so much we couldn't eat it all, but we carried it with us around the hutong.  We went into some of the artisan shops.  Most in our area were silversmiths making jewelry.  I loved this dragon.

Here are the silversmiths at work

This is their finished products.

This guy was hawking for a food place.  There were hawkers everywhere.

There was even a "cop in a box" with the phone number if you need him.  Please do NOT break the glass!  There were cops marching around, too, just like last night.

I got way too much dried fruit for the trains to Xi'an and Hong Kong, but they were delicious, too.  After walking around, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for going to to the train station in the morning.