Liu Yi is a policeman and a regular that I know from the tea house.  The shop is named for its owner, Zheng Yun, and it fits snuggly into a small space on Jiu Gulou Street.  When newcomers walk in, Zheng Yun always welcomes them with a smile and offers them to drink tea with him for free.  I have purchased cakes of Pu’er tea (from Yunnan^W Province in Southwest China) as gifts and for myself, but I have never once paid to sit and drink with him.  He always refuses to take money for the tea that I drink, and he has never once asked me to make a purchase.  Still, I buy at least one bag a month, so as to keep me awake while I work in the office.  The shop itself only has one table, but what a table it is!  It’s made of baby-bottom smooth wood, with the stools underneath shining under the interior lights.  If there is a big crowd in the shop, Zheng Yun pulls out handmade stools for guests to sit on, making us feel as if we are in his living room, rather than in a tea shop.  Like the diabolo grounds where I meet with my old friends, this tea shop is another spot that creates a world within my world.  It’s a place where the silence between conversations is pregnant with philosophy.

I first met Liu Yi before the Olympics when I was still in search of a visa at the time.  During our first encounter I was a bit wary that he might want to search me and ask to look at my passport and visa.  Authorities were a bit touchy concerning foreigners at that time.  My worries disappeared immediately when he began to speak his broken but easily understood English to me.  I’ve also encountered Zhang Yue a number of times.  Sometimes when I enter the shop, she is pouring the tea instead of Zheng Yun or Guo Tao.  Guo Tao is Zheng Yun’s younger cousin and has only been in Beijing for a few months.  This visit to Huang Hua Great Wall is the first time for both of them to get there.  As for Liu Yi and myself, we’ve been to the Great Wall more times than the number of fingers we have on our hands.  Each time I go is like  clearing the dust from eyes.

When we arrive at the Wall, Liu Yi parks his tiny, steaming rental car next to the gate where we have to purchase tickets.  We walk our way over a bridge that leads to a path up to the Wall.  The ascent upwards is quick and dusty, ending at a small iron ladder that we have to climb to scale the side of the Wall.  After a few rungs of the ladder, we’re over and in–the invading American amidst a group of Pu’er drinking friends.

There aren’t many people on the Wall today.  This section is not the most popular, but the scenery is gorgeous.  Every section of the Great Wall that I’ve been to has its own particular beauty.  Like a good book of short stories, I’m always a little winded when I finish one section, but I know that the next one I read will be ever bit as good.  My backpack is full of nectarines, buscuits, cucumbers, and water that I bought for the hike today.  I take one nectarine out of my pocket and begin to stuff it into my mouth, transferring the weight from my back to my mouth, and then from my mouth to my stomach.  Offering my backpack’s contents to Zhang Yue, she agrees to eat one of my cucumbers.

The sun is hot as we make our descent up the steps.  The only shade that we receive is when we enter the towers that occur about every 10 minutes.  Liu Yi and Zhang Yue are having a hard time on the ascent.  Liu Yi is a smoker, and Zhang Yue breathlessly pants, her face turning tomato red as we ascend.  Guo Tao bounds forward, his youth showing from the spring in his step.  I don’t feel tired, but my neck and back already have that sticky sweaty feeling.  The sweat begins to absorb the dust from the Great Wall every time we enter one of the towers.  Walking upwards doesn’t bother me so much as treacherous descents do. 

After about 4 towers we notice there is only one group of people in front of us at the steepest incline of the day.  They are coming back down, and we encounter them at the beginning of the waterfall of steps that face us ahead.  There are 3 westerners and one Chinese.

“I think you could go back.  It’s very steep.  Maybe dangerous,” the Chinese guy says to me.

“Oh, it’s ok.  I don’t know how much further we’ll go.  Maybe we’ll just see the view at the top,” I respond.  Guo Tao literally runs past me and bolts up the stairs.  His legs are pistons powering an engine.

“That friend of yours is crazy,” says one of the Westerners.  I can tell by his accent that he is american.  He gives me his business card and tells me that he is in the tourism business.  We exchange information.  Networking on the Great Wall.  We chit chat a few minutes about places of interest to visit in Beijing, and then I trudge after Guo Tao to get to the view at the top.

Guo Tao waits for me at the top of the steepest incline that we need to climb for the day and the view is spectacular and about as clear a day as one can hope for in and around dusty Beijing.  We can see villages below, as well as the road that we drove up on.  Liu Yi and Zhang Yue make their way up after us.  In front of us I can see the Wall make a treacherous hairpin turn downhill towards a a small village and pathway before it starts shooting back up again.  How the hell did they make this damn thing?  My instinct tells me not to go past this hairpin.  I am a little afraid of heights…but then, isn’t everyone a little afraid of heights.  We decide to walk it anyway.

Right before the hairpin turn, the Wall is smooth and easy sailing, like a runway before take-off, or a bowling alley on top of tree tops.  I make my way ahead of everyone else because I know that I will be the slowest to descend.  I’m just like that.  Making the hairpin turn, I creep to the precipice and beginning of the descent, leaning over the top as I would lean over the edge of a waterfall.  The steps look okay at first, but it they are also incredibly steep.  Additionally, there is quite a bit of loose rubble along the way, making it easy to slip if one rushes.

“It’s safe to walk,” Guo Tao yells back to Zhang Yue and Liu Yi.  They come forth and we start the descent.

We make our way slowly down the steps, bit by bit.  There is nowhere to hide from the Sun, and it beats down incessantly on the ever growing bald spot on the top of my head.  I walk foot over foot down the steps.  Sometimes there are parts where there are no steps, only portions of steps and small rocks.  I brace myself along the Wall, going hand over hand.  My eyes catch something moving on the wall.  A small lizard peeks his head out of a cravasse and looks at me for an instant, as if to say, you idiot, what the hell are you doing here?  He easily scampers his way away from me and over the side through a small hole, sticking his tongue out to make fun of me.

“Hey Jeffrey, catch!” Guo Tao yells.  I turn around quickly, maybe too quickly, and look.  Guo Tao has picked a small fruit off a tree’s branch.  From where, I don’t know.  He tosses it down at me just to watch it bounce.  The green fruit bounces its way down the steep steps like a rubber bouncy ball, the kind I used to by in quarter machines when I was a kid.  As I watch the fruit bounce towards me, my depth perception is slightly thrown off balance, and I feel a slightly nautious as I contemplate whether or not to try and catch it.  If I try, maybe I’ll misjudge it’s bounce and velocity and get thrown off balance.  My body tumbles down the steps of the Wall, my brains being bash inside of my head as I slip on a stone, fumbling the bouncing green fruit between my fingers.  My head fills with blood…I’ll never walk again….These images go through my head in that flash of an instant that it takes for the fruit to whiz past me.  Instead, I half-heartedly pretend to try to catch the fruit in order to appear like I’m having fun.  Just thinking about playing games on this descent sends me into a slight panic.  The fruit bounces past me harmlessly, and I can continue to concentrate on staying alive while we make our way down to the small village at the bottom.

After some time we come to a part of the Wall that has been cut off.  There is a complete drop off of about 5 or 6 feet.  In order to continue our descent, we’ll have to actually climb this part, not walk it.  Normally, I feel more comfortable doing steeper descents walking forward, so that I can see where I am going.  This part of the descent will be impossibly to do this way.  We’ll have to turn our backs towards the abyss this time.  It’s not a long drop off, it’s just that if one were to slip, injury would be certain.  The only uncertainty is the severity of the injury.  My fingertips sweat again.

Liu Yi goes first.  It’s a completely blind descent, and it only takes him about 10 to 15 seconds, but he has to feel his way down towards stable footing, unable to see what is below him.  Watching him going down, I wonder how I can do this.  Guo Tao goes next and easily makes his way down like a mountain goat.  Zhang Yue looks at me and motions for me to go first.  I pass my backpack to Liu Yi below me and then turn my back to the unknown.  I decide to start off by getting down on all fours and backing my legs over the small drop off.  I feel like I’m moving my legs over the top of a skyscraper.  It’s all mental, I know, but I’m helpless in my mind.  Then I freeze. I don’t want to move.  I see myself not going up, not going down, just staying in this spot for eternity, burning up like a raisin in the Sun.  I stand up on the ledge again and shake my head, motioning for Zhang Yue to go first.  I need to get another breath.  I watch Zhang Yue make her way down the drop off.  Liu Yi and Guo Tao guide her feet with their words.

“Move your foot to the right.  There’s a good stone there.  Ok. Ok. Good.”  She makes her way down easily.  She’s the second most nervous person here.  Now it’s up to me, the big chicken.  I wonder, should I enter a state of panic, would I still be able to understand and think in Chinese?

I turn around again.  The view in front of me is the empty descent that we have made so far.  I can still see the top of the hairpin where we have come from.  Maybe I should just walk back that way.  No.  It’s just a little drop off.  Just a little thing.  Fingers sweating again.  Damn.  I stick my right leg out behind me blindly, piercing the clear blue sky with my fear.  Liu Yi directs me to the nearest rock.

“Ok. Just move your foot a little bit over to the right.  Ok.  Right there.”  My foot fumbles around like a coal miner in winter trying to light  a match to warm a stove.  My leg finds the stone jutting out, and I press down on it, expecting it to give way so that I can fall into the chasm that my brain tells me is right below me.  The stone doesn’t move.  It sticks.  I grab onto the ledge with my sweaty fingers.  The dust sticks to my hands like chalk.  My left foot finds another stone.  The Wall is still there.  My hands are still grabbing it.  My feet do not slip.  The chasm in my brain shrinks.  Before I know it, I’m standing next to my friends once again.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Liu Yi says.  They’ll never know.  They’ll never know.  Ahead of us is the small village.  The steepest part of the descent is over and done with.  We carefully make our way down towards the houses.  My knees are shaking slightly from the descent.  Going down is always tougher than coming up.  Our plan is to walk through the village, turn right, and then loop our way back to Liu Yi’s rental car.  Just before we get to the village, I notice that the green fruit that Guo Tao bounced at me before is lying in the middle of the pathway, its green color covered with a sheen of grey Great Wall dust.  My head no longer dizzy, I reach over and pick up the small fruit.  I place it in my pocket, saving my new friend from the treacherous beauty of Huang Hua Great Wall.