长城 (chángchéng) - The Great Wall

Alternate titles: 辛苦 (xīnkǔ) - hard, exhausting & 下滑 (xiàhuá) - sliding, slides

"Professor Gu... [pant, pant] ... Shao Laoshi ... [wheeze] I promise to never...complain...about climbing the stairs...in Kresge... [gasp] ever again."

This photo may have captured my most Chinese moment to date.

At Northwestern, first and second-year Chinese students have to climb up four flights of stairs in Kresge or University Hall five days a week to get to class. At Beida, we have to climb five flights of stairs to get to our three-hour Chinese classes by 9 am every weekday. But at the Great Wall, we had to climb up a seemingly endless and incredibly steep flight of stairs for a good 15-20 minutes in order to get to the Great Wall itself. I wasn't counting on getting such an intense workout before, you know, we even got to see the damn thing. Also, the giant bloodsucking insects didn't help much (I got one on each leg - it would have been more terrifying had I been able to get enough oxygen to my brain to really register it). But - I did it! And once I managed to catch my breath/my heart stopped trying to race with it, I really began to enjoy and appreciate the beautiful, mountainous scenery surrounding this historical landmark. 

Blue skies! Fluffy white clouds! Green mountains! Brownish-gray wall!

There was a beautiful view on all sides!

We went to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall located a couple of hours outside Beijing, and we were fortunate enough to have really beautiful weather today. According to Professor Gu, this is the best weather he's seen at the Wall in 11 years. The president of the university (Morty! Morty!) and his entourage also joined us for the climb.

Of course, what comes up must inevitably come down. At the end of the afternoon, our options for getting back down included:

1.) Climbing back down,
2.) Taking a cable car, or
3.) Tobogganing down a giant slide

Guess which option I chose?

Today, I climbed the Great Wall of China and then tobogganed back down. nbd.

That's right. You can toboggan down from the Great Wall after you're done climbing it. For more information about the best thing the Chinese have built since the Great Wall, aka the Mutianyu Slideway, click here. As it turns out, it's a little difficult to take a video while driving a little toboggan down a giant slide, but here is my attempt below!