Wild Recap of A wild Tour

The Best Tour there is!

Coming around the bend after the first tower

After a Short break and a nice story from William about the walls defenses we got to moving along the wall.

Taking a break with a story, some cookies and water

Dan just chillin' out!

Exploring the towers George and Elyse Style

The wild wall untouched by Mojo's feet

The Ox Horn, what a freekin hike!

Another wild photo of the wild untouched Ming wall

Far off in the distance, you could barely see the outline of the wall on what looked to be the tallest peak around!

We are going somewhere around there, HA

Goons, some of us still waking up from the 3 hours of sleep we had the night before

Getting to see and walk along the wild part of the wall was the biggest surprise of the whole trip. I thought that we would get to a large parking lot with droves of Chinese and international tourists taking photos to a small piece of the wall where small children would be squatting with their parents. I was even surprised at how much trash there wasn't on the path and surrounding areas, even though it was a path less travelled. The towers were windy thanks to max, and i am pretty sure that some of heard the after shock of the 9.2 earthquake coming from Japan, although it could have just been max again.

I am jealous that i will not be able to go on the great wall trip next year to china, i would have loved to spend a whole week walking the wall and getting to know its history and the background of certain areas that were walked on. I will also miss those delicious dumplings that William and the women cooked for us wen we were gone.

The Wildest Wall Adventure One can have!

The best Hike we have ever been on? I think Yes!

The Wildest tour i have taken

While Maxwell and I combined our research, we both thought it would be a good idea to have our own conclusions and thoughts about our whole adventure with William the Wild.

Taking a quick break for some pictures

Alex and Abby exploring a tower

Another break with a story by William

While Maxwell and I combined our research, we both thought it would be a good idea to have our own conclusions and thoughts about our whole adventure with William the Wild.

The part of the hike that really caught my eye and has remained in my mind the whole time was the long and steep crawl up the ram’s horn, which was the highest point of our excursion that day.

After a long grueling hike, or should I say climb to the top of the Rams horn, we began our decent down to camp where we were going to eat and discuss our day. The slow but steady walk down started off on a very steep part of the wall, with loose stones and steps the whole way down. We had a few slips, but no falls yet. Once we reached the woods and the mud we had a few small falls, but no one was seriously injured.

Once down to the bottom, every one got comfortable, taking off their shoes, drinking water, using the bathrooms, the whole 9 yards! After a few minutes, the special lunch we had been working for all day was finally done, and we were ready to eat. William passed out every one the local Yanjing beer for a celebration that we finally finished the long hike. Once we were done talking and sharing, the feast began, with some very delicious coleslaw and some of the best dumpling I had all trip, we all ate and laughed, sharing stories and laughing as our stomachs filled.

The trip back to the Hutong Hotel was full of sleeping, snoring and some switching of transportation; we all got back in one piece.

Max King getting his Buff on

William, the Wildest Wall tour guide there ever was!

William, The wild wall guy!

William taking a quick break before he led us to the top of the Rams Horn

Wild Will, our tour guide, was one of the most knowledgeable tour guide that we had the whole trip, especially about the Great Wall of China which he, by him self, hiked the whole two thousand four hundred and seventy kilometers. From that adventure, William Lindesay wrote and had published a book called “Alone on the Great wall”, a tale about his long journey documenting the wall. William then focused his studies on the Beijing area Ming dynasty great wall in 1994.

After his long journey and much research on the Beijing area great wall, William became focused on cleaning the area up, which was deteriorating with much garbage and pollution, which William got the Friendship medal from the Chinese Government on their national holiday! After that, William set up an organization named, “International Friends of the Great Wall”, which helped preserve the “National Relics” of Chinese heritage, as in the Great Wall of China.

William Lindesay has made many contributions to many different areas of research on the Great Wall, such as National Geographic traveler and The Asia Wall Street Journal. He has even been named in the top fifty places to go in your lifetime, a very prestigious award if you ask any one. William has not only been in magazines and news articles, but also does live lectures for many different bodies. He has done them for The Explorers club in New York City, as well as many different universities all over the world.

The Explorers Club document of appreciation to William for his lectures

William was given a very prestigious award by the Queen of England called the “Officer, Order of the British Empire” for his preservation of the Beijing area great wall.

William is now doing research and writing his new project, the national geographic Special called, “The Wall of Two Williams”, a documentary explaining and comparing his trip along the great wall, to William Giles, the person who walked the great wall in 1918.

William is still working on preserving the area of the Great wall the Mojoers went on, as well as much more. He is also taking people on tours along the Wild Wall, called that for it being very untouched wildly overgrown.

The Wild part of The Wild Wall

Sources for information

Lindsay, William. "My Biography." Welcome to Wild Wall. Feb. 2007. Web. .

The Wildest Wall Tour us Mojo'ers could have taken!

The Wildest Wall Tour!

Wild Will's Wild Compound

The Great wall of China was the most adventurous part of the China Mojo trip to China through out the whole trip. Waking up at six thirty in the morning in a Beijing Hutong to hop a bus to the great wall was tiring of coarse, with every one still groggy from the traveling and five to six hours of sleep. As the bus came to a stop, a tall man hopped onto the bus carrying our lunch and supplies for the long day ahead. After a quick stop at the gas station, we were off to tour the wall. With Maxwell King sitting right next to me, snoring with his head in his lap, we traveled along a long, winding mountain road with the great wall seen way in the distance. William, our tour guide, was spewing amazing information the whole bus ride and as we arrived at his house and compound for some Danishes and Tea before the tour we were not prepared for.

Our tour guide Wild Will

After a bathroom break and some exploring of the grounds around the compound the journey began.

William Lindesay was the name of our tour guide, along with two native Chinese men who have been working and touring the wall with him. Walking through a small town to the opening of the path to the top of the ridge where the first stop on our tour was taking us. The line of students zig-zagged up the hill huffing and puffing behind our seasoned climber and tour guide William. As we increased our elevation, the view on the other side of the mountain got more and more incredible; William stopped every few hundred yards for some more interesting information about the area and a chance to take some amazing photos of the surrounding areas.

Scenery across the valley

Finally we got to the top, with Max king at the head of the group, I came up behind, a little out of shape I must say. When we got to the top, the real adventure began!

MMMMMMMMedia

1. Which media environments and technologies/applications/platforms will I use in documenting and telling the story of my China trip?

Similar to W's documentation style, i will be using words to describe the photo snapshots that i will be taking through out our wonderful trip to China.

2. What equipment/gear will I need to bring to capture my stories?

I will be bringing my digital camera as well as my macbook pro to organize and put together a slideshow of our trip.

3. How will I capture and "bottle" my stories while traveling in China?

Each day, no matter where we go, i will be bringing my camera with me documenting where we are, what we are doing and why we are doing it. I will also try and get as many people from our class in the photos as well, sort of like an action play by play of the trip.

4. Please provide a "sample example" of your multimedia approach here.

My approach will be a slide show sort of like a story line of our trip including the airport and all the traveling we do. An example was when i had to document my trip to the UVM Geology museum, i used my camera to show every step of what i did.

YAY China!

China is a very interesting subject to study and there is so much to learn about this ancient civilization all the way to the present. I find it very interesting that this communist country is one of the only nations that we, the United States, do so much business with importing a lot of their cheaply made goods to many different businesses. This is something that i think is a small stereo type, that everything that comes from China is very cheap and not of good quality and even hazardous to peoples health. I found an article online from the website called "Who Sucks?" and it gave a large timeline of goods that have had to be recalled due to health risks and problems that were made in Chinese factories. It is a very long list of recalls and this just makes me think that a lot of companies are just using China for its cheap labor, and paying cents on the dollar for each thing made. Although I feel that this is wrong, China provides an extremely cheap alternative to working in the United States. One thign that caught my eye though was the large amount of milk that was found to be tainted and melamine and was making people very sick. Lower is a photo of Chinese officials searching for the milk that is tainted at a grocery store.

(Image provided by: NY Daily News Feb 8th, 2010)

Another thing that i know about china is that they are still a communist country, and pretty much except for Hong Kong, regulate almost everything. They are a very pro China government, and is very well known to censor anything that would go against their perfect government. One example that we all know about is the Tienanman square ordeal where many students were protesting and the military opened fire on them and killed many of them. The weird thing is, is that no one in china knows about what happened there because the chinese government censored everything, disallowing any information about that happening to be released. Below is a picture that we have all seen before in one place or another is the chinese student standing in front of the tanks in the square in front of the Forbidden city.

( Image provided by Treehugger.com A discovery Company)

There is another instance of when the chinese government used its power of censorship is when the last winner of the nobel peace prize was thrown in jail for supposedly writing against the chinese government. He wrote about a reform of the governments power in china in 2010 and was given the peace prize, then was thrown in jail as a political prisoner and is still there. I find it interesting that the government can judge something that you write as being treason against the government, and i can probably say that we wont see Xiaobo for a long time. I watched a lot of news on this happening and was both surprised, and not at the same time.

(Video provided by Guardian.co.uk)

Many people in the west supported his views of democracy and thats why he was given the prize, but anything written or said trying to get a new form of government in china i assume is taken as treason.

From all the different shows and news reports that i have seen about China i find the way that things are run have made them a very successful and powerful country that we will see more from in the near future.

Lets eat some Duck in Beijing

In my other China Core class today called Wild Wild West with Dr. Noonan we watched No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. He traveled to Beijing and went to a small Duck house and it made my mouth water watching what he was eating!!!

WE ALL HAVE TO GO HERE!!
If we can find it of coarse.....

nom nom nom nom