The first view of Beijing was simply breathtaking…. the smog in the city was literally a thin gray curtain that slowly snuck into your lungs. I remember wondering if rain or snow could even come through that thick layer of smog. It was freezing cold. The cold spread throughout the huge flat and expansive city. Beijing seemed endless to me, only the peaks in the far distance and knowing that the Great Wall of China was not far away assured me that the city had an end. I had such loving experiences with the locals in those first days in Beijing. Just looking for my hostel, everyone helped me with hands and feet wherever they could. I remember, one lady drew me a little map on the back of a note she had with her.
Everything seemed so incredibly different, simply different. People seemed to be so fascinated by light-skinned people that they constantly wanted to take pictures with me. Then there was also my light hair and blue eyes, which some astonished locals pointed out to me with their fingers. With some paparazzi behind us, I explored the city with a handful of girls from the USA. The clean streets seemed to crisscross endlessly and you can truly spend days looking at sights in Beijing. The smells of the street food were not always balm for the soul and sometimes nestled quite nasty in the nose.
My memories tell me that I was constantly freezing, the icy cold slipped under your clothes and even dragged the appetite out of you. It was either zero degrees or just below zero.
One day we visited the Great Wall of China – for me a mysterious sight I always had on my bucketlist. I quickly found out that being afraid of heights and having quite a good sense of balance is for sure an advantage when visiting the Great Wall. We hiked for miles on the wall, climbed walls that stood in the middle of the path, and tried to make our way through uneven, steep, and narrow stone paths. But the view, the view is worth the effort. You couldn’t see the end of the mountain hills. Again, breathtaking, fortunately not because of the smog. I just couldn’t believe, I remember, standing there, miles away from home on the fucking Great Wall of China. As if in a painting, the mountains hid behind each other until far in the distance, until they fade and can no longer be seen.
And the wall, these stones that build the path, however uneven they may be and however steeply they have been placed, were one by one placed by hand! I had to play this through in my head for a few minutes at the time – this wall was built by hand! Truly unreal… At least, the workers here had a way better office view than I did by that time. But actually, you can’t joke about it, an unbelievable number of people died while building the wall. The exact number of deaths is still unknown.
I remember staying in Beijing for a few days, not long, maybe five in total. The people warmed my heart during those days and it was the best start to my journey I could have ever wished for. I was 18, naive, and today I literally get goosebumps thinking about all the things that could have happened. But as the motto of my world trip was: As long as we don’t die, it’s going to be one hell of a story.
