Words Fail Me

Going from my business class railroad seats…
…to the sad, anemic (no Diet Coke???) “first class” lounge at the Tianjin airport, I’ve become acutely aware of just how bourgeois my tastes have become.

I grew suspicious when my Tianjin hotel seemed to have fewer restaurants & bars than its guest information guides had suggested.  I stopped of at a floor with a supposed year-round bar and found this derelict room.  Only reverb-drenched big band music would have completed the horror ambience.

Tianjin’s “Ancient Culture Street” is a reconstruction of a Qing-era shopping street (but is largely a tourist trap for Chinese visiting the city.)
Many Chinese claim they are not religious, but I’m always struck by how reflexively superstitious almost all of them are.  Whenever I see them lighting incense as shrines or temples, I automatically assume it’s piety, but perhaps it’s just more reflexive cultural motions.

I took a lonely ride up a sort of ski-lift to the mountains overlooking Shanhaiguan.  The sea falling away behind me, the mountains rising up before me, the Great Wall tracking along to my right, the wind blowing through the pine trees.  It was the single most calm, solitary, peaceful moment I’ve had in China.
I hiked around the mountain paths, finding lakes beyond the mountains and deserted temples.  
I found a broken down network of sky buckets.  Some of them had shattered glass windows.  A powerful post-apocalyptic vision.  
Riding back down the ski-lift, I tracked the Great Wall along the ridgeline to the north.  
  
  Then, looking back from the base of the mountains, I saw the rest of the easternmost line of the Great Wall.

As the sun set in the west beyond Shanhai’s mountains, you could still see — faintly in the distance — the silhouette of the Great Wall and its battlements along the ridgeline.  I had to zoom in like crazy, so I apologize for the potato quality.

Here’s a bonus, prettier sunset photo, though.
Finally, I waited for my train back to Tianjin in the tiny Shanhaiguang train station.

A short walk from the Old Dragon’s Head — and jutting out into the Bohai Sea — is the Sea God Temple.
  

This is the Shanhai Pass gate through the Great Wall.  In 1644, a great battle took place here which led to the end of the Ming dynasty and the establishment of the Qing dynasty by the Manchus from north of the wall.

 Eli and I lost a bet.   We were supposed to lose a bunch of weight.  We missed our targets.  We took our comeuppance.

Eli was supposed to eat a whole durian.  I was supposed to half a durian and drink several shots of gin.

I hate gin.  But I loathe durian.  It smells, to Western noses, at least, like rotting flesh.  It is vile.  It is nauseating.  It is utterly revolting.

We ate it.  We gagged constantly.  We both nearly threw up.  You can see from the motion blur on my hand in the photo that I’m just trying to get through the fucking ordeal as quickly as possible.

Eventually, we begged for mercy and our tormentors relented.

Worst day I’ve had in China thus far.