3 days later and I'm still scraping the mud off...

Saturday started as any old regular day.  We got up and dressed for a run.  But that's where the regular day ended.  Because this past Saturday was Tough Mudder day.  The day when we were to prove ourselves against the grand-daddy of obstacle course runs.  So, dressed for a day of sun and mud, we chucked a change of clothes in the car and off we went to Drumheller.  Well, off we went to my friend's house, where her guy graciously drove us to Drumheller in his Jeep.

Let's start with the first question you probably all have-what on this odd and exciting planet is "Tough Mudder"?  It's hard to describe, actually.  Normally I would say it's a race, but it's not.  Maybe you could call it an obstacle course, but that still wouldn't be quite right.  Perhaps "physical challenge" would be closer.  It's a run, if you want to run, but you can also walk it if you like.  And there are obstacles, but you can choose not to do them-without penalty-if you don't want to.

Okay, so I've done what you could call "obstacle races" before.  Specifically, the Warrior Dash and a Spartan Race.  The Tough Mudder is similar, but also completely different.  It's not a race.  Seriously, it's not.  You can try and do the course as fast as you can, but there's quite honestly no point, because they don't time you.  THEY DON'T TIME YOU.  There is no finisher's list to check on the internet the next day.  I cannot emphasize that enough.  There are no winners at Tough Mudder.  The winners are the people that attempt it in the first place.  And if you finish, great!  But the point isn't to do it fast, it's just to do it at all.  As you enter "Mudder Village" before you start the race, they give you a bib with a number on it.  The purpose of this number?  I have no idea.  They don't look at your number as you cross the finish line.  They don't check your number before you start.  Your number is in no way actually associated with your name.  In fact, when you check in, they just take the top number off a pile and hand it to you.  Almost everyone actually loses their bib somewhere during the race.  And given the obstacles, it's surprising any of the bibs make it across the finish line.

So I'll tell you how the race went first, because the obstacles themselves are the interesting part-and we'll save that for last.

It went pretty well.  Like I said, you are allowed to skip obstacles if you don't want to or can't do them.  And unlike the Spartan Race that forces you to do burpees if you can't complete one, there's no penalty if you do skip one.  The emphasis of the Tough Mudder is to promote teamwork-your team helps you through it.  Actually, a lot of the obstacles are designed specifically so that you can't do them without help.  And while you're out there, random strangers will help you, and you will help random strangers.  It's like an unwritten code-we're all out there to get through it, so why not help each other out?

Given that, all three members of Team Truffle Shuffle made it to the finish line, and at least one member of Team Truffle Shuffle completed each and every obstacle.  I did all but 2 of them, and my husband did all of them.  Our third team member sat a few out due to an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction early in the run that left a rather large hole in a-shall we say-revealing part of her pants.  So she chose to skip a few of them in the name of public decency.  Thankfully, though, she happened to be wearing her gorgeous, top of the line Team Truffle Shuffle tank top over another tank top, so we pulled that off, ripped out the arm holes and used the safety pins from our now missing bibs to turn it into a makeshift skirt.  Worked remarkably well, actually.

It took us somewhere around 3 hours to finish the course.  We could have gone faster, and we could have pushed ourselves a little harder.  But given that no one was timing us and we had all day, why bother rushing?  Sometimes you just need to splash down in the mud and not worry about getting out right away.  The Arctic Enema's a different story, but more about that later.  At the end we were all tired and ready for our free beer, but no one was exhausted or in need of medical attention.  Cuts and scrapes, yes.  Ambulance ride and stitches, no.  I was the only one to retain my numbered bib at the finish line, and also to cross the finish line with my pants fully intact.  I think I'll take credit for that rather than chalking it up to luck-it was all skill, my friends.

We walked away on Saturday with mud in places there should never be mud.  I'll explain how we got so muddy later, but sufficed to say that I have genuinely never been that dirty in my entire life.  They call it the Tough "Mudder" for a reason, and that reason is that they do not skimp on the mud.  Mud pits, mud crawls, floating through the mud, you name it.  If you ever feel the need to literally be covered head to toe in mud and don't feel like paying for it at a spa, sign up for a Tough Mudder.  I guarantee you won't be disappointed.  At one point, my hair was attempting to escape the ponytail elastic I had in it, so rather than wrestle with it, I used my mud-caked hands to stick it back in place.  Incidentally, mud seems to be a better hair product than traditional hairspray, if you were wondering.

It was 27 C in Drumheller on Saturday, and the mud pits were just far enough apart that in between them the mud had time to dry.  And it was so thick that when it dried we all looked like we had scales.  I'm still trying to get the moisture back in my skin and it's been 3 days.  And because the mud had managed to dry, the few opportunities we did get to dunk ourselves in something other than mud didn't really do much to wash the mud off.  I will say this, though-the mud kept us remarkably cool during the day.  At the end of the course there were some makeshift showers that let us knock enough of the mud off that we didn't dirty the inside of the Jeep on the way home too much.  Well, showers isn't really the right word, given that it was really just a bunch of garden hose spray nozzles attached to some trusses that we had 3 minutes to use.  And they were strict about the 3 minutes, too.  Everybody went in as a big group and they turned the water on for 3 minutes.  After that the water shut off completely and you had to get out.  And when the mud is caked and dried on, 3 minutes isn't really enough time to get everything off.  It's just enough to get off the worst so you can head over to the beer garden to enjoy a well-earned, frosty malted beverage.

So on to the actual course itself.  The event started and ended at the Drumheller stampede grounds, and you can bet they took advantage of that as much as reason would allow.  The grounds are actually at the top of the valley, overlooking the town and perched atop some gnarly cliffs.  And they used those cliffs.  You really had to give them credit, actually, for using the natural landscape as an obstacle itself.  The cliffs from top to bottom are probably 150-200 metres high, and we went up and down them no less than 3 times (they called these "cliffhangers").  More if you take into account all the little hills we went over, around and down.  The course wound through 16.5 km of the badlands, and the obstacles were spread out so as to give you an obstacle every 2 km or so.  It broke up the run enough that it didn't seem that long, at least to us.  Though you have to take that with a grain of sand, as I've run a dozen marathons myself.

The running itself was through grassland, over dirt motocross track, and dirt trails.  It wound around a lot, and went up and down so many little hills that I didn't even bother to count.  In fact, if you had taken the obstacles out all together, it would've been a pretty fun and gnarly run by itself.  I think one of the things most people were finding challenging was the distance itself.  While I myself don't find 16.5 km to really be all that far, to a lot of people who don't run as much as me, that's actually quite a challenge.

But then chuck some obstacles into the mix and you've really got yourselves an adventure.  And the obstacles are something to behold, let me tell you.  Let's see if I can recall them in order for you...

Oh, so you might think, you get to the starting line and away you go, until you hit the first roadblock. But you would be wrong, my friends!  WRONG!  The obstacles start even before you actually get to the starting line!  Yes, it's true, you have to crawl through a culvert and over a 10 foot wall before you even start the run!  We were aghast when we saw this.  Wouldn't 16.5 km of pain be enough?  Apparently not.  No, they've gotta squeeze those few last ones in there, just for kicks.

Kiss of Mud.  When we went through this one, we thought, "well, this is pretty muddy, can't really get much worse than this, can it?"  We were wrong.  Ever so wrong.  This obstacle is basically barbed wire strung over a pit of mud, and you have to military crawl underneath it, through the mud, to get to the other side.  Wouldn't be too bad, but they strung the wire quite low-so low that even our 5'4" friend had to belly-crawl through it.  I got my hair caught a couple times.  This is also where we had our first bib number casualty, as my husband emerged from his kiss without his.  Reason to attach it to your back instead of your front, I guess.  (https://toughmudder.com/obstacles/kiss-of-mud)

Bale bonds.  When we arrived a this obstacle, it was no more than a big pile of hay, which to anyone who grew up in Alberta doesn't really seem like an obstacle at all.  But after looking at the photos on facebook, I think this one started as big round hay bales that just ended up as a big pile after about 10 waves of people had already gone over them.  So score one for starting a bit late in the day, I guess.

Balls to the Wall.  It's a 3.5 m wall that you have to scale using only a rope.  Sounds simple until you're standing at the bottom and realize how tall 3.5 m actually is.  Or until you're perched precariously at the top of the wall, trying to figure out how the hell you're going to get down the other side, still only using a rope.  Or until you're about half way up and realize that there's no safety rope, and that if you fall the only thing stopping you is the ground and about a foot of loose straw strewn about at the base of the wall.  Yeah, that's when it gets interesting.  We all managed, though, and the only casualty was one pair of pants.  (https://toughmudder.com/obstacles/balls-to-the-wall)

Arctic Enema.  Hands down, best name for an obstacle.  Ever.  Also, surprisingly accurate.  This is a half-height shipping container filled with ice water.  No, not just cold water, ice water.  As in, there is ice in the water.  Real, frozen ice.  And not just a tiny wee bit at the top, but actually a good full layer of ice floating along the top.  They add ice as the day goes on, you see.  In fact, there are 2 volunteers whose job it is to continually dump bags of ice into the Arctic Enema as the day progresses.  Your task?  Hop into said shipping container full of ice water, fully submerse yourself halfway through to get underneath a plank set happily in the middle, and get to the other side while still able to breathe.  Doesn't sound so bad, until you realize that the container is just big enough that by the time you reach the other side your legs have stopped working and it becomes incredibly difficult to climb your way out of said container.  And you think a slurpee-induced brain freeze is harsh.  (https://toughmudder.com/obstacles/arctic-enema)

Berlin Walls.  In essence, a wall that's 3 m high that you have to somehow get over.  No handholds, no footholds, just that-a wall.  How is that a challenge, you ask?  Consider that I, myself, barely come to half the height of said wall.  This was the one obstacle that I didn't do.  My team was willing to help me, to be fair, but it's one thing to get over the wall.  It's entirely another to get down the other side.  And jumping from a height that's almost twice as tall as me didn't really seem like the safest idea in the world.  We did, however, get my husband over the wall.  As it turns out, other people's shoulders make for excellent steps.  (https://toughmudder.com/obstacles/berlin-walls)

Warrior Carry.  You have to pick someone up and carry them for 50 m, then swap off and they carry you.  Not hard, but one of the little ones they tossed in there to help sap your strength a little more.

Wheelbarrow.  You remember doing this as a kid, right?  A lot harder when you're a grown-up, I'll tell you.  In fact, I actually can't do this anymore.  But I can hold my husband's legs while he does it.

Everest.  This is basically one side of a half-pipe that you have to run up, grab the edge and haul yourself over.  Sounds easy until they decide to put some lovely slippery plastic on the face of it and make the damn thing over 3 metres high.  Then it gets interesting.  The general idea seemed to be to get at least one member of your team up, then that person hangs their hands over the edge to catch the rest of the team.  I managed to get hold of my team's hands, but after that I had to hang there like a muddy piece of meat while they hauled me up, because I couldn't grip anything with my feet.  It wasn't pretty, but it somehow worked.  I guess it helps when the rest of your team has at least a little upper body strength.  (https://toughmudder.com/obstacles/everest

Mile of Mud.  The mud.  Oh, God, the mud.  It got dirty, friends.  Really, really dirty.  The mile of mud consists of, if I remember right, 5 pits of mud separated by large mounds of dirt in between.  You have to wade through the mud (about waist deep in our case) and climb over the mound of dirt-over and over until you reach the end.  Simple, yes?  NO!  The mounds of dirt are mud themselves.  Ever try standing on a muddy hill?  Same idea-your feet slip out from under you.  So attempting to climb a mound of solid mud is virtually impossible.  Compound into that the fact the the pits are 8 FEET DEEP and you've got a challenge.  How do you get through it?  Same way as Everest, actually-get one person atop the mound and have them haul you up.  Also simple, right?  NO!  The mounds are slippery, so as soon as you grab the hand of the person above you, they slip.  So if you're hauling them up, you have to make sure your feet are planted or you're heading face first back into the mud pit.  And that's if you can get a grip on their hand, given that, like everything else, it too is covered in a thick layer of mud.  The only easy part of the mile of mud was getting down from one mound back into the next mud pit-you slide and plop down.  (https://toughmudder.com/obstacles/mud-mile)

Floating in the Mud.  This one was fun.  It was another mud pit, but this time they chucked a ton of salt in with the mud, so you could float.  Yes, the object of this one was to float from one edge of the mud pit to the other.  It worked enormously well.  And also made you that much more dirty.

Glory Blades.  These are basically slanted Berlin Walls.  While I didn't go over the actual Berlin Walls, I managed to get over these because the slant made them a little bit shorter.  And because we had to go up and over from the side they were slanted to, you could slide down the other side rather than having to drop from a vertical wall.  (https://toughmudder.com/obstacles/glory-blades

Walk the Plank.  This was exactly what it sounds like.  They built a platform 12 feet high, with a plank hanging out over the edge.  Then they dug a pit under it and filled it with water.  Your only challenge was to jump off the plank.  An easy challenge 'til you get there, see the muddy water and how small the pit is, and wonder how deep they could have possibly dug it.  12 Feet, when you're standing above it with those uncertainties floating around your head, actually seems really high.  I asked the guy (there was a guy at the top telling people when it was safe to jump) and he assured me it was plenty deep-so away I went.  I'm not generally afraid of heights, so this was a bit if a no-brainer for me, but there was one girl up there who was really struggling.  She would head out to the edge, chicken out, and let someone else go next.  It's like a band-aid, though-just plug your nose and go.  Also, the water in the pit washed a bit of the mud from the Mud Mile off, so that was a happy bonus.  (https://toughmudder.com/obstacles/walk-the-plank)

Killa Gorilla.  They called this an obstacle, but it was really just a series of two short, steep hills you had to go up and down.

Electroshock Therapy.  This one made me nervous.  Electric wires hanging from a trellis that you had to walk through, 10 000 volts in the wires.  No, thank you, that doesn't sound like fun.  But they put it right before the finish line, so you kinda have to, right?  You can't end it by skipping the last obstacle.  So I went.  And you know what?  Not that bad.  Yes, I could feel the jolts, but it wasn't really any worse than, say, a tattoo needle feeling.  (https://toughmudder.com/obstacles/electroshock-therapy)

So there you have it-my Tough Mudder experience.  Would I do it again?  As they say, HELL YES!  Despite the bruises that came up the next day, and the aches and pains I'm still suffering from several days later, I would totally do another one.  I mean, where else can you get a good mud treatment for less than what you'd pay at the spa?  And if anyone's interested in joining us next year, let me know.  There will always be a place on Team Truffle Shuffle for anyone who cares to join us.

Come tour China with the Ivory Giants.

Okay, first of all I have to start with an explanation of the title.  What's an "Ivory Giant", you ask?  Well, it's a term coined by by my most recent travelling companion, my brother-in-law.  He's 6 feet 4 inches tall.  I'm 6 feet tall.  Now take these two abnormally tall people, and fly them to China, a land where they literally don't make shoes big enough for either of us.  Now I think you get the picture.

What?!?  You went to China?  Why?!?

Well, let's see...the terracotta warriors, delicious food, thousands of years of history, the Yangtze River, all the tea in...well, China.  Oh, and the Great Wall Marathon.  Yes, the Great Wall Marathon.  You did, in fact, read that correctly.  A marathon.  On the Great Wall of China.  Yes, yes I did.

I can't actually remember who originally told me about this race, but I've known about it for years, and after a failed attempt to get my husband to come with me a couple years ago, I decided I was going this year.  Even if I had to go alone.  If I was gonna go, and I was gonna take someone with me, I wanted it to be another runner.  So I searched high and low for someone willing to shell out the cash to come along.  It wasn't cheap, so pickins were slim.  But then I asked my brother-in-law, and he was game.  In fact, he was more than game.  I think he might have been more excited than I was.

The race is basically run as a tour.  You can pick one of a couple different packages that include hotels, most meals, and transportation within China.  They also offered several extension tours after the race.  We literally picked the longest one we could.  It would have us in the country for two full weeks, which would make the 10 hour flight almost worth it.  So we contacted the lovely Elaine at Marlin travel and booked our trip.

We landed in China mid-day on May 14th-a Wednesday.  The very next day was "inspection day" on the wall.  You see, in order to prepare you for the marathon itself, you're required to go out to the wall 2 days before the race to walk the section of the wall that the race covers, and get a briefing of the course itself.  Not only does this give you a chance to see what you're up against, in terms of the race, but it also gives everyone a chance to get their picture-taking out of the way, so the wall doesn't get clogged up with paparazzi on race day.  You see, out of the full 42.2 km worth of marathon (or 21.1 km if you were my brother-in-law and only running the half), only 3 km actually goes along the Great Wall.  In the case of the half marathon, you head up a 4 km long hill, along the wall, then come down off it and go for a little jaunt out into the villages for about 10 km, before returning to the wall where the course ends.  In the case of the full marathon, instead of 10 km worth of villages, you get 26 km(10 of which are one continuous uphill), followed by a trek back up what they call the "goat track".  This brings you back onto the same section of wall you started on, only in reverse.  So you get to go down that 4 km section of uphill you started on.

The Great Wall of China, children, was built in the mountains.  Now granted, they're not the Himalaya, but they're not exactly flat, either.  There are hills.  And stairs.  Lots of them.  If the t-shirt is to be believed, 5,164 of them.  So inspection day isn't just a day to take pictures, it's a day to contemplate your fate.  To assess your readiness and ask yourself, "Do I really wanna do this?  I might die.  I might just die on the Great Wall of China, now that I know what I have to do on race day.  Am I ready?"

Well, to be honest, I'm not sure how anyone could possibly be ready for that.  They give you the option to drop down a race.  To run the half instead of the full.  To run the fun 10 K rather than the half.  To have a look at the Wall and think, "No, I'd rather not die in China.  Perhaps I'll run the shorter distance."  So did I?  Did I chicken out and do the half instead?  Really, folks, if you need at ask that question, you don't know me at all.  Of course I didn't!  Why run the half when there's a full?  Why go home with only half the glory?  Where's the fun if you know you're going to finish?  No, it was the full marathon or nothing for me.

We spent that night and the next in "rural" China, a couple hours from Beijing in a place called Jixian.   I use the "rural" because in a country with less land mass than Canada, there are over 1 billion people.  There's really no such thing as rural in the terms that we know here.  In Beijing alone it's estimated that there are 21 million people.  The city is 50 square kilometres.  So yeah, rural gets some quotation marks in this context.  The next day we visited the Qing tombs, which, we were told, were almost exactly like the Ming Tombs, just less crowded.

I'll give this to the Chinese, they know how to build a cemetery.  Well, a cemetery for the Emperor, that is.  It had quite a few buildings, and thought the tomb itself wasn't huge, the amount of carved marble in there was astounding.  What struck me, inside the tomb itself, was the temperature.  While it was a scorching 32 degrees Celsius outside, underground in the tomb it was chilly enough to wish I'd packed a sweater.  At one point I sat on a block of marble and it was so cold I thought my butt was gonna get frostbite.  But it's not just the one building.  There are gates upon gates upon gates.  I didn't actually count them, but there must've been at least threes sets of elaborate gates to go through before you actually got to the tomb itself.  But before you even get to the gates, you walk down the Spirit Way, a road lined with statues of various different animals and warriors in pairs, with 2 sets of each..  The first set is kneeling, out of respect for the Emperor.  The second set is standing, ready to defend the Emperor.  They also make for some fun photos.

Next up was race day.  It was time to run the Great Wall Marathon-or as I now call it, the Great Wall Race of Death.  We were up at 4 am, nervous as all get out and surprisingly awake, though that might be blamed on the jet lag.  At the wall it was freezing.  That didn't last long.  The temperature that day peaked at a "hotter than the sun" 30 degrees Celsius, which I can now tell you from personal experience is not the best temperature at which to be running a marathon.  Especially if the air is good and stagnant.  Now, I could tell you all about the experience; the ups and downs, the highs and lows, and what it was like running on the wall.  Or you could just watch the video I took while I was running.  That would likely be faster and a lot less boring.



And since YouTube has a 15 minute time limit, here's the rest of it:



I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.  No, that wasn't actually meant to be sarcastic.  Despite appearances in the second half of the video, I actually did enjoy the race.  It took me 7.5 hours to finish.  That is longer than I have ever taken for a race.  Ever.  It wasn't easy, and it wasn't pretty, but I finished, and I feel pretty good about that.  So there.  Oh, and a big thank-you to my dad for lending me his GoPro camera so I didn't have to struggle with my little point-and-shoot all day.

After the race all we had to do was hop on a bus heading to the hotel we would be staying at in Beijing that night.  It took 2 hours to get there once the bus left, which, while somewhat unpleasant, actually gave my stomach enough time to settle so I could eat the sandwich they'd given me at the finish line for dinner.  By the time I got there, my brother-in-law had already showered and I'm guessing had a quick nap.  So once I managed to hop in the shower and scrape the thick layer of salt deposit off, we went down to the hotel bar for a celebratory beer.

The next morning we were up early again (no rest for the wicked, you know), and off to see the Temple of Heaven, visit a tea house, Tienanmen Square and the Forbidden City.  Much like the Qing Tombs, the Temple of Heaven and Forbidden City are a lot less buildings, and a lot more gates.  Unfortunately, after going on several tours to many different sites in China, I can't really say I'm wholly impressed with their religious and historical buildings as they're presented to the public.  Okay, so some of them are very old, and it's an amazing thing that they're still standing-especially since some of them are made solely of wood-but they have a tendency to show you the outside of a beautiful building, but not let you go inside.  Admittedly, some of the buildings are still religious sites, and it would probably be some kind of desecration to let the heathen masses inside.  I understand and respect that.  But as a tourist, it's really not that exciting to be shown a lovely building with a ton of local historical significance, only to have a gate across the entrance so you can get no closer than peering in the door.  At least they let you walk into Westminster Abbey.  At any rate, the reason there isn't an exciting and eloquent description of a lot of the places we went is because we were only really permitted to see the outside.  And I hate to say it, but after a couple, all the buildings start to look a bit similar.

The Temple of Heaven has a huge park surrounding it, which in our limited time in China was probably the most peaceful place we went.  Retirees are actually allowed into the park for free, so they go there to socialize and even get a little exercise.  We saw a bunch of groups huddled together singing from songbooks, we saw groups doing various forms of Tai Chi (did you know there's a form of Tai Chi involving tossing a ball back and forth with concave paddles?), we saw groups dancing, and we saw where grandmothers and widows go to place personal ads.  No, seriously.  They're looking for missing daughters, husbands for their daughters, husbands for themselves, or even just friends to pass the time with.  It's like placing a personal ad-they write the information down on a piece of paper, then go to the park and place it next to them on the ground or on a bench, and wait for the other people milling around to read it and make an offer.  I'm not kidding, this actually happens.  We even saw it in a couple other places, too.  And according to our guide, it works.

The tea house, now that's where it got awesome.  Our group was somewhere around 20 people, so they took us in and sat us down around this huge table, with a couple of tiny teacups in front of us.  They then proceeded to explain the proper way for men and women to hold a teacup (yes, ladies, the pinky does stick out!), how to brew the proper cup of tea, and let us try several different kinds of tea.  It was remarkably relaxing after race day and quite informative as to the different types of tea.  They then, of course, proceeded to sell nearly everyone in the group some tea.

Tienanmen Square was, and I really hate to say this, a little underwhelming.  I'll give them this, though, it's bloody huge!  The square is big enough to hold(standing room only) one million people.  And It looks it.  To me, it was a huge, nearly empty expanse of concrete, with the occasional statue here and there thrown in to give people something to look at.  But it holds a lot more interest and history to the people of China than it does to a naive westerner like me.  For the people of China, it's a symbol of the modernization of their country.  Or, as our guide put it, "a symbol of New China".  For the people of China, if I understand correctly, it's a vast sea of concrete from where Chairman Mao announced the formation of the People's Republic of China, which evidently bettered the lives of basically the whole country, and brought China out of the dark ages.  That's what I got from what our guide was describing, anyways.  So while it might visually not be fireworks and unicorns, I guess knowing that the history is so much more than that makes it worth seeing.

From Tienanmen Square we walked through the south gates into the Forbidden City.  Now, with a name like that, you'd expect golden dragons, lush gardens and monstrous and elaborately decorated rooms.  But you would be somewhat let down.  The only golden dragons you'll find are the ones painted on the buildings (the Emperor, by the way, was the only one allowed to have dragons decorating his buildings).  There is a garden inside the Forbidden city, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it lush.  It's also incredibly small.  Apparently the reason for this is that the buildings are all made of wood, and they didn't want to tempt fate by having potentially flammable greenery anywhere but in the one spot.  And the lush rooms?  Go back three paragraphs for an explanation of why we didn't really see much of those.  The Forbidden City, however, is huge.  I didn't count all the roofs, but there were a lot.  (On a side note, the yellow tile roofs are specific to the Emperor as well-you won't see them anywhere else except on the tombs of previous emperors.)  Apparently only about 35% of it is actually open to the public at the moment, as they're still restoring the rest.  I guess it takes a while to clean out all the stuff the concubines left behind when they moved out...

Oh, and somewhere in there we went for lunch and had Peking duck.  Peking duck is a pretty famous dish created in Beijing.  Our guide told us what was special about the ducks, but I can't remember what she said.  I do remember that she said the reason it's called Peking duck rather than Beijing duck is because Beijing is actually called Peking in Cantonese.  That's why when you fly into the Beijing airport it's ID letters are PEK.  Most of the people in southern China speak Cantonese rather than the Mandarin that's spoken in northern China and Beijing, and they're the people that leave China for other countries most often, so the dish got it's name that way.  It's basically a duck that's been slow-roasted, then sliced into pieces.  You take a piece of the duck, put it on this very thin (almost crepe-like) pancake, add some veggies and this teriyaki-type sauce, then wrap it up and eat it like a taco or a burrito.  Hey, that took like, 4 different countries' worth of food to describe.  Weird.

We also stopped at a Silk mall, where they showed us the silkworm life cycle, how they harvest the silk from the cocoons, and how they turn it into duvets and the like.  And then they sold us some silk, of course.

The next day we chilled a little, and just went wandering about in Beijing by ourselves.  I managed to miss the street I had wanted to turn on, so we actually ended up near Tienanmen Square again, but also managed to find a McDonald's!  While this might not sound like a really great thing, it was to us at the time.  After nearly a week of living on white rice and lackluster, dumbed-down-for-the-tourists Chinese food, the Golden Arches were a fragrant oasis of beef and ice cream.  And praise the gods of fast food, they had a pointing menu!  Yes, the whole menu was in Mandarin.  And yes, we were desperately trying to figure out how we were going to indicate that we wanted a Big Mac with fries, when the lovely woman behind the counter pulled out a laminated copy of the menu.  Now, in most other countries, you could look at the menu and at least sound out the letters phonetically and they'd probably get your meaning.  But Mandarin is a character-based written language.  Ever tried to pronounce 巨无霸?  Me either.  So praise be to the pointing menu.  We were to learn later that such a thing is quite common in the fast food restaurants, which meant that we didn't starve to death in China.

That night we took a sleeper train to Yichang.  There are two kinds of sleeper trains in China-softsleepers and hardsleepers.  Softsleepers are the ones you want.  There are 4 bunks in a berth, there's headroom, and a door to close off the hallway.  Hardsleepers have 6 bunks in each berth and no doors to shut out the lights in the hall.  Our train to Yichang was a softsleeper, but there wasn't really much "sleeping" involved.  We ended up sharing the berth with a Chinese couple who wouldn't let me close the door (thus it was bright as day all night long), and who proceeded to have a snack and talk quite loudly to each other through the open door at around 2:30 am.  So we arrived in Yichang rather sleep-deprived.

We spent some time in Yichang before embarking on our cruise, which was to take us down the Yangtze River to Chongqing.  Peter, our guide for the day, took us to a place where they make hand-embroidered art, and then to a Feng Shui centre so we could learn more about that.  It was actually quite a relaxed day, and after lunch we boarded the ship we would spend the next 4 nights on.  While our cabin was quite small-especially since it had 2 twin beds in it-the balcony made it worth it.  We spent many an hour on the balcony, just watching the world go by and sipping cool malted beverages.  Breakfast and lunch on the cruise were buffets, and dinner was Chinese style-where they give each table several large dishes and you spoon your bit out from there.

We did go on several shore excursions along the way, some of which were better than others.  The best was the first morning when we went up a small gorge where we learned about the traditional lives of the Chu people that lived along the Yangtze.  Being the only English speakers on the ship, we somehow got our own guide and were able to wander about more at our own pace.  It was a beautiful little spot, and at one point we even got to feed a monkey!  The guide claimed they were wild monkeys, but given the way that little dude scarfed down peanuts I'm gonna say he's pretty acclimated to the tourists.  Oh, and we managed to marry my brother-in-law off to a Chinese girl.  She didn't look too pleased about it, though.  (They showed us a traditional marriage ceremony for the area, and they chose the groom from the audience, so naturally they picked the giant white dude.)  

We also went to the Three Gorges Dam, which produces the most hydroelectric power of any dam in the world.  It was, of course, raining and cloudy the day we went to the dam, so you couldn't see anything.  Except the ship locks, that is.  The locks are over 2 km long, and can fit 2 of the cruise ships and 2 barges in each-I know this because our ship went through the lock.  It takes 4 hours to get through the multi-stage lock.  The dam raised the water level of the Yangtze 110 metres, displaced 1.5 million people, and flooded tons of cultural areas.  All along the river you get the opportunity to see what they call the "hanging coffins", which are really just coffins of an ancient people that believed that the closer you were to God when you died the better.  So they picked large fissures in the rock, jammed 2 logs into them as high as they could, and laid the coffin across the logs.  A lot of these had to be removed when the Yangtze was flooded, so in some of the museums and cities along the river you get the chance to see them up close.  Some of them are still in situ though.

We also visited the City of the Dead, most of which was flooded by the dam so has been almost completely rebuilt, with the exception of the temple for the God of the Underworld at the very top of the mountain that's still original.  There was also a morning we took a smaller ferry up a tributary of the river, which was incredibly narrow but quite picturesque.  

The cruise overall was actually quite relaxing, and coming smack in the middle of our trip was just at the right time.

We disembarked early in the morning at Chongqing, and were put on a hardsleeper day train to Xi'an.  It was at this point that we figured out what the Mandarin symbols for top, centre and bottom bunks were-quite by accident because one dude got irritated when I sat on his bunk.  Though he did get his revenge in a roundabout way, since he snored pretty much all the way to Xi'an.

The first day in Xi'an we went to see the Terracotta Army, which I'm pretty sure is the only reason most tourists go to Xi'an.  It's quite impressive, actually.  There are 4 pits on the site, but the 4th pit hasn't been excavated because it was discovered that it was empty.  The first pit has over 6,000 terracotta soldiers in it, and the insane part is that they're all different.  Seriously.  Right down to the hair on their heads and the grips on their shoes, not a single one of them is the same as the others.  The experts figure that each one was based either on a real soldier or on friends and family of the people making them.  The other two pits have significantly fewer figures in them.  One has the "special" infantry-the archers and the horses and such-and the other has the higher ranking soldiers-the generals and whatnot.  The second largest pit-the one with the special infantry-has only been partially excavated.  Apparently when they first started digging, a lot of the warriors still had the painted colour on their armour.  But after several months the colour started to fade, and is now virtually gone.  The archaeologists have decided to leave as much of what's currently buried where it is until they can find a way to assure that when they do dig it up they have a way to preserve the colour.  It's also interesting to note that when the soldiers were excavated, they were all broken.  They've left some sections of the pits the way they found them, and seeing the mess and broken pieces that they started with, and how painstakingly they've worked to put them back together is truly amazing.  It's also amazing that all that work was done simply so it could be buried.  For real.  When the Emperor died, they literally tossed thick lengths of wood across the pits and just left them like that.  All so he could take his army to the afterlife.

That afternoon we convinced our guide to take us to the Great Wild Goose Pagoda.  It was built after a monk, Xuanzang, returned from India and needed a place to store all the books he'd brought back with him while he translated them from Sanskrit to Chinese.  Strangely, it looks a lot less like traditional Chinese buildings than we'd gotten used to.  That evening, after a little prodding, we managed to get our guide to take us to a real Sichuan restaurant.  He'd been telling us about how spicy real Sichuan food is, and when we noticed at lunch that what we were eating was hardly spicy at all, we asked him if they dumbed it down for the tourists.  After a little discussion he admitted that they do.  So we asked him if we could get real Sichuan food for dinner.  He finally relented and took us to a place a couple doors down from our hotel.  It was pretty good, though I think he may have ordered us the tamest stuff on the menu.

The next day we had free from guides and tours.  Which, I've come to determine, is wonderful.  I like being able to go at my own pace and spend as long or as short as I want somewhere.  I got up early and decided that, since the ancient city wall in Xi'an was close to our hotel and was just under 14 km around, that I was gonna use that for a morning run.  The wall was built in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and has since been restored quite a bit.  So not only would I get in a good run, but I'd get to see the city wall as well.  And it was glorious.  I got there just after it opened at 8 am, and it was deserted.  After nearly 2 weeks of the crush of people, being somewhere I was completely alone it felt like I could breathe for a minute.  Even if the air was thick with smog.  It took me just under 2 hours to make it around, since I had to stop for pictures every now and then.  But it was a pretty nice run, I have to say.  Should you be a runner and end up in Xi'an, I highly recommend it.  Though do get there early or you'll spend the entire time dodging tourists on bikes.

That day, as we wandered, we stumbled upon the Muslim Quarter.  There is a sizeable Muslim population in China, and the Muslim Quarter of Xi'an was really fun.  Tons of tiny little shops selling tourist knicknacks, weird food and everything in between.  I bought a weird something-or-other on a stick that we both thought was pineapple, only to take a bite and discover that it was rice.  Honestly.  Rice on a stick.  I wouldn't have thought that possible, but apparently take sticky rice, compress it enough and you can serve it on a stick.  There were also kebabs and some interesting candy-like substance made from peanuts that were crushed by 2 dudes with giant mallets taking turns to smash them against the top of a sturdy barrel.  It was quite comical.  We also discovered that this was also a most excellent place to purchase what souvenirs we wanted by putting our calculator bargaining skills to the test (more about this later).

That night we caught another overnight softsleeper train back to Beijing, where we were picked up in the morning and were fortunately allowed to check into our hotel to shower.  Then we hit the streets in Beijing to pick up a few last things and make one more stop at McDonald's to finally have some delicious tarot pie.  The next day we were back on a plane home to Canada.  And a good thing that was, too, since the thermometer hit 38 degrees Celsius that day.  That's hot enough to melt a Canadian, you know.

Wait a second!  You're not finished yet, my friends.  There's still more stories!

Smog.  Oh yes, the smog.  When we first arrived in Beijing, I didn't actually notice it.  I kinda thought that maybe it was just a hazy day, like you get sometimes.  I was wrong.  That was what smog looked like.  It wasn't bad while we were in the mountains, and thankfully wasn't a problem during the marathon.  But everywhere else it was awful.  It just hung like a pall over the entire country.  When we came back to Beijing after the race we decided it was time to break out the masks.  And man, did they ever help.

No, it wasn't particularly comfortable wearing those things when it was over 30 degrees.  And no, we wouldn't have worn them if we didn't need to.  But after a couple days of coughing, and coming back to the hotel room each night wondering why you want to scrub your throat out with a toothrush, you wear the mask.  You become grateful for the mask.

Food.  The "tourist-safe" food you get in China is pretty much what you'd find at any given Chinese restaurant in Canada, with the exception that it's more bland.  They eat a lot of rice, as expected, and a lot of noodles.  Not all the dishes are particularly appetizing, though.  There was a kind of noodle that they served each night on the cruise ship that tasted something akin to a stew of dirty socks and underwear.  And they don't really do breakfast food there.  For breakfast they set out dumplings, stir fry, and for the tourists, toast and jam.  At the good hotels we managed to get some generic cereals, too.  Those were good days.  Dessert?  That's a foreign concept as well.  After 2 weeks we were craving cake and pie so much we couldn't wait to get to the Vancouver airport because we knew it had a Cinnabon somewhere in it.

There.  Are.  People.  Everywhere.  The population of China is over 1 billion, and they've squeezed that immense population into a space smaller than Canada.  As a Canadian that's very much used to my bubble of personal space, I felt almost claustrophobic in China.  You can't go anywhere to be alone.  You can't go for a stroll in a park for some peace a quiet, because there is none (unless you manage to make it up onto the Xi'an city wall just after 8 am on a weekday).  And with over 1 billion people, you have to shout to be heard.  Literally.  Have you ever heard someone someone having a conversation in a language that sounds like it's from China?  Does it sound like they're yelling?  Well they are.  It's the only way they can be heard in their native country.  At times my brother-in-law and I just gave up trying to talk altogether because we couldn't hear each other without screaming, and it just didn't seem worth it.  Everyone's talking.  All.  The.  Time.  They don't ever stop talking.  After 4 days on the cruise ship, we determined that it takes about twice as long to say something in Mandarin as it does to say it in English or German.  I know this because Christian, the river guide on the cruise, was trilingual.  He would explain something in Mandarin, then German, then English.  I still understand enough German to get the gist of what he was telling them, so I know that what he was telling them was what he later repeated to us in English.  But he would take twice as long to explain it in Mandarin as he did to explain it in German.  Which kindof explains why the Chinese are always talking.  They're trying to get their point across, it's just the way their language is structured it takes forever to explain something.

Cultural chaos.  Okay, so I know it's a foreign country, and I know it's gonna be different.  But for the most part, with most of the travelling I've done, I haven't noticed any really significant differences in culture outside of what you might expect.  So China was an eye-opener, let me tell you.  They don't queue in China.  Which means that when they get to a toilet (and yes, they call them toilets over there-and yes, they are squatters-and no, they don't provide toilet paper so you have to bring your own), rather than forming a relatively orderly line where it becomes first-come, first-to-pee, they just crowd into a big mish-mash of people and it's total chaos.  If you're not pushy enough you could be there for hours.  And it's not limited to toilets, either.  We ended up at a few buffets with the Chinese and it was not uncommon for a hand to come snaking up beside you to grab whatever was in front of you, as you waited for enough space to move forward along the buffet.  Because they must have it, and they must have it RIGHT NOW!  At our last buffet breakfast on board the cruise, I was spooning out some cereal for myself, which happened to be behind the carafe of milk, such that my arms were quite literally flanking the carafe.  Admittedly, I was also doing it a little on purpose because the carafe was getting low and I wanted enough milk for my cereal, but that's not the point right now.  As I'm standing there, arms on either side of the milk, a hand literally comes snaking in between my arm and my body, and proceeds to take hold of the milk that's less than a foot from my torso.  At this point I was tired, a little sick, and getting really irritated by the impatience and complete lack of courtesy of the Chinese people on the boat.  Yes, I understand it's a part of their culture and they see no problem with it, but sometimes no amount of patience and understanding can keep you from getting a little pissy.  So I stopped spooning, turned to look at him without moving my arms, and quite loudly said "REALLY?"  I'm fairly certain he had no idea what I'd just said, but the tone of my voice and my body language must've gotten the point across well enough, because he withdrew his hand quite quickly and went to use the milk from the other side of the buffet where there was no angry giant white woman guarding it.

More cultural chaos.  The Chinese aren't shy about staring at foreigners.  In Beijing we were stared at significantly less than elsewhere, but probably because they're used to it.  We knew we'd probably get stopped and have people ask to take our picture.  We were prepared for that.  But in North America, we're basically taught that it's rude to stare.  So when you get to a Chinese train station and you're the only white people in the waiting room, and people are literally open-mouthed staring at you, it gets a little weird.  I wasn't offended by it, it just made me a bit uncomfortable.  Especially when you're looking around and accidentally make eye contact with one of the people staring at you, and they quickly look away as though they want to hide it.  Dude, you were openly staring at me 5 seconds ago and now you're embarrassed?  I don't get it.

Yet more cultural chaos.  The Chinese are racist.  Please don't take that for being as a bad as it sounds, I just can't really come up with any other way to describe what the experience was like.  The best example I can give of this is from the cruise.  Since we weren't part of a large tour group, my brother-in-law and I were seated at the "extras" table where the guides and a few other guests who weren't with the big tours were seated.  We were the only Caucasians at the table.  So what did we find every single time we went down to the dining room to our assigned table?  Two sets of cutlery.  None of the other places were set with cutlery.  And there was cutlery available in the centre of the table, should anyone want it.  But the employees on the ship assumed that we would want a fork and spoon, rather than just eating with chopsticks.  And they had assumed this without even meeting us or seeing us eat to first assess our chopstick using skills.  This likely should not have bothered me as much as it did, but I couldn't help but think how presumptuous and, quite frankly, racist the ship was being by doing that.  To assume by the colour of my skin that I need cutlery because I simply wouldn't know how to use chopsticks?  And the strange part is that, despite us continually using chopsticks for both lunch and dinner and leaving each time without even touching the cutlery, they continued each and every meal to put the cutlery out.  I guess another good example of this would be with the food, and how, as I mentioned before, they basically change it for the tourists.  To assume that people visiting your country simply won't be able to eat the food you normally eat every single day-whether it be too spicy or the contents too odd for them to stomach-is offensive.  Now I will admit that there is some food I simply won't eat.  But if you plunked the chicken feet down in front of me and I didn't want to eat them, I would politely ask for something else.  Would the Germans serve you a hamburger instead of rouladen just because you weren't German and they thought you wouldn't like it?  Would the Mexicans give you pasta instead of a taco because they figured you couldn't handle it?  Would the Aussies refused you Vegemite because of the taste?  No, they wouldn't.  They would serve it to you whether or not they thought you would like it because you came to their country try something new, and to experience what they experience.  So why do the Chinese think it's okay to change what they give you based on your nationality or the colour of your skin?

Now I feel I have to apologize a little for what I've just written.  Yes, I do believe that with what the Chinese assumed about us that they were being racist.  But we were not physically nor mentally hurt by what they did.  It was nowhere near they kinds of racism that's happening on a daily basis in other parts of the world where people are actually dying because of it.  It was really more just a quirk in our vacation.  But personally, I feel the need to point it out, because it changed my opinion of the Chinese people a little.  I don't believe they all feel the same way, and we did meet some incredibly wonderful and brilliant people there.  But those few little things that we experienced just showed us how little they really know about us, and how that lead to their assuming certain things about us based on race.  I guess I'm just trying to say that I felt the need to point it out, maybe in case you, dear reader, were ever to go to China and wonder why they keep giving you cutlery instead of chopsticks.
  

Does anyone in China not snore?!?  Seriously.  We took no less than 3 trains while we were in China, and we did not fail to end up in a train car with someone that snored.  It was horrifying.  At one point, one fellow was so loud that even with my iPhone plugged in and the music turned up as loud as it would go I still couldn't drown him out.  The best part?  Buddy gets down from his bunk in the morning, after snoring for 6 STRAIGHT HOURS NONSTOP, and says-and I'm not kidding here-"oh, horrible night!"  Oh, really?!?  REALLY?!?  YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE THAT FREAKING SLEPT THE ENTIRE NIGHT!  We know this because YOU SNORED ALL NIGHT LONG!!!  At one point I sent a text to my husband complaining about this, and he suggested resorting to pranks.  You know, hand in warm water, shaving cream...smothering him with a pillow...  I'm not gonna lie, I was tempted.

Beer.  We drank a lot of beer in China.  Why?  Cheaper than water, my friends.  Yes indeed.  Now, China doesn't have the best beer I've ever tasted, but in a pinch-or in a foreign country-it'll do.  We tried TsingTao, YangLing, Snow Beer, and some kind of lovely local beer in Xi'an flavoured with pineapple.  You might not think pineapple would go particularly well with beer, but it does.  It's surprisingly refreshing after a day of being stared at by the locals, and it was cold, which was a novelty in China.  You see, it was quite difficult to find anything there that was refrigerated, so cold beer was like a gift from heaven.  Even better is that they don't come in any of the pansy-sized 350 mL cans and bottles like they sell in North America.  Oh, no.  They come in 500, or even 600 mL bottles.  Big enough to quench the thirst, not so large as to require a nap after consuming.  They've got it figured out in the beer department, the Chinese do.

Calculator bargaining.  This is an excellent system, especially when you can't count past shi(ten) in Mandarin.  The seller punches into a calculator what they want for an item.  You counter by deleting that number and entering what you think you should pay.  Then they counter by punching in what their counter-offer is.  At some point you come to an agreement and voila, souvenirs.  It worked like gangbusters.

Feng shui.  This is a big thing in China.  People have their houses set up to have good feng shui.  They bring in experts to help them.  Their emperors build their tombs in places that specifically have good Feng shui.  The colours and jewellery they wear is designed to help their personal Feng shui.  It really is quite the industry.  For the tombs, the general idea is that you have to build it with a river in front and a mountain behind.  In your home, certain areas in relation to others have to be bigger, but if they're not, you can sometimes counter them by hanging certain ornaments in the right places.  But my personal favourite Feng shui object is Pixiu.  Pixiu is a mythical creature somewhat like a cross between a tiger and a dragon, and he has no asshole.  Really.  They actually tell you that.  The idea is that Pixiu (pronounced pee-shoe) eats and eats and eats, but nothing comes out.  This is also true for the money that comes into your house.  Pixiu eats all the money and it never leaves your house, so you'll end up rich.  Prosperity is an extremely important ideal in China.  The most wealthy man in China has over 800 pairs of Pixiu in his house.  Yes, I did buy some.  They're happily sitting on my mantel, munching on whatever pay-cheques happen by them.

Chinese hotels and accomodations.  At first, when you arrive in your Chinese hotel room, you think to yourself that it's just like any other hotel room you might find elsewhere in the world.  But then you look closer and start to notice all the little differences that, quite frankly, take a little getting used to.  Like the "light console" between the beds, with switches for nearly every light in the room.  Or the complimentary combs and toothbrushes, which are rarely provided anywhere in North America, even in 5 star hotels.  Or the odd hair dryer hanging from the wall that looks a whole lot more like a vacuum cleaner than a hair dryer.  But the strangest part?  Well, that would be that weird, transparent glass wall between the shower and the rest of the room.  You know how most hotel rooms are laid out, right?  Just inside the door is a short hallway with the bathroom to one side, then at the end of the sort hallway is the room itself.  Usually the wall separating the two is solid.  Like, it's a real wall.  Not so much in China.  There, your solid wall that provides for privacy and noise dampening is replaced with glass-sometimes frosted, sometimes not.  As though, for some reason, you might want to watch your companion in the shower.  There is, however, a well-placed curtain in the event that you're, say, travelling with your brother-in-law and really have no desire to see which bits he washed first.  But, because your voyeuristic tendencies shouldn't be controlled by the naked person you're spying on, they make sure to put the curtain on the outside of the window.  So don't get any ideas about making weird faces at them.  They could pull that curtain back at any moment.  On a side note, if anyone has any idea why they have these glass walls, please tell me.  We spent 2 weeks speculating and still couldn't come up with a decent reason.

Kiss your good night's sleep goodbye.  So beds in Chinese hotel rooms deserve their own paragraph, and you'll soon learn why.  Are you a side sleeper?  Do you enjoy you cushy pillowtop mattress and big fluffy pillow?  Then be prepared to get no more than 4 hours of sleep a night in China.  The beds there are rock hard.  Rock.  Hard.  You can try to sleep on your side, but you'll wake up no more than 20 minutes later with a sore hip and your bottom arm completely asleep.  After the first few hotels and trains (yes, the sleeper trains have rock hard mattresses as well), we took to comparing which beds were the softest.  The Qianmen in Beijing won by a very slight margin.  The pillows?  Those vary a little bit at least.  You have your standard soft, fluffy varieties, and you have your slender, hard, lumpy varieties.  But occasionally, you'll get one filled with rice.  No, I'm not kidding.  On our first train, the pillow was literally a cotton sack filled with rice.  Ever tried to sleep on something like that?  You can't.  Your head moves and it crunches in your ear.  And you have to work your head down into it like working your heels into the sand at the beach.  And that's only if you fold it in half in the first place, because it's so thin as a single layer you can't even tell there's a pillow there at all.  One pillow even attempted to be the best of both worlds by being soft and fluffy, but also having a large packet of rice sewed to one side.  I flipped that sucker rice side down.  And they don't have top sheets in China.  They have duvet covers that-I'm hoping-are changed in between guests.  So you have your fitted sheet, pillow cases, and a duvet cover.  Even in the silk mall they didn't have sheet sets like are sold in North America-they had duvet covers with pillow cases.  But I guess then you at least get to avoid the sketchy polyester blanket that has God-knows-what on it that every hotel room seems to have.

So that, in a very long-winded nutshell, was my trip to China.  Overall it wasn't the best vacation I've ever taken, and it had its highs and lows, but I'm still very glad I went.  If you're dying to know, the race itself was my favourite part.  But considering my love of running, that's a bit obvious, isn't it?  At any rate, thanks for reading!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I did manage to run the 50 km ultramarathon in Calgary 3 days after getting back from China.  Took me 5 hours and 30 minutes, but I did it.