Read the first part of the Great Korean Wall of China

As we neared the top, Hu and Jo came bouncing back down. “We’ve been cheated!” they said angrily. “This is the not the Great Wall”.

“Looks like it to me, it’s a wall, stretches as far as the eye can see and there’s a rabble of Mongolians trying to destroy it on that side.”

“No it can’t be it just stops up there, the taxi driver tried to cheat us. We check the guide books, the wall should stop.”

Photo: Andrea Hunt

Annett and I are not convinced anything is wrong but we had back down to the taxi. The Macho Men Koreans have raced ahead to declare war in the car park. Turns out this is the other Great Wall spot, not the main Badaling area where everyone goes. We confront the driver, who speaks no English, or Korean, or German, or Spanish, which is all we have in our language arsenal, but we deduce that the driver wants another 50rmb (5eur) to go to Badaling as we spent two hours here already. Hu reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out not his kidney, but a mobile phone. He calls his friend who speaks Mandarin, recital of Korean War and Peace begins, minutes pass……

Phone handed over to Taxi Driver, recital of Mandarin War and Peace begins, minutes pass……

Taxi driver says, “Well, you have to pay.”

Annett fumes, I do my version of fuming (a slightly quizzical raise of the eyebrows), the Koreans, who we later find out, are the softest people on the planet and will do anything to avoid conflict, want to pay. Annett and I refuse. Phone passes back to Hu, who discusses our refusal to pay again with his friend.

Days and weeks pass. Phone is passed back to driver. Year pass, I’m losing the will to live, a few more hairs and my patience, phone is handed back to Hu, minutes pass. We ask very clearly and strongly that the person on the phone tells the driver exactly this:

“You are trying to cheat us, we won’t pay you a penny more, take us to Badaling or we’re getting the bus back to Beijing and you get nothing”. But we suspect after the “no-conflict Koreans” chat, that what ends up being given to the driver is:

“Thank you for your kind and gracious offer Mr. Taxi Driver sir, good day to you. Please hold whilst we discuss this tremendous opportunity for you to take some more of our money with our new international friends”.

Many minutes pass. We walk away. He follows. I give up, it’ll be dark if we don’t get moving soon, the Koreans would pay for our whole 5 month holiday if we so much as asked if it had avoided an argument, hell will have to freeze over before Annett will budge. I offer 30RMB, which is less than 10% of the overall 300 RMB fare, and we got two extra hours for it; deal is done and we’re moving again.

Photo: d’n’c

We arrive at Badaling. Relations with the taxi driver have soured, he now wants 200 RMB of the 330 RMB upfront before he will drive us back to Beijing in-case we don’t come back down from the wall to his taxi.

I’m going to throw myself off the damn wall; ideally I’ll land on his stupid taxi.

The Koreans will happily pay. Annett and I make “ you’ll-have-to-pry-it-out-of-our- cold-dead-hands” look and he settles for Jo’s jumper as a partial deposit. Why he thought I’ve a strong enough emotional attachment to Jo’s jumper that would stop me getting the bus back I don’t know, but the deal is done and we can go. Relieved, we got out of the car, angry with the Taxi Driver. Then I turn and Jo slips him a 10 RMB note as a tip, presumably as he is feeling guilty at not giving him his trousers as well.

Photo: Adam Fletcher

The view is much better at Badaling. The wall sweeps across the mountainside as far as the eye can see, but there’s also about 800x as many people, a Starbucks, hawkers a-go-go, and luckily, as I was physically dead from the climb at the last area - a cable car.

We did return to the taxi, tired and awaiting the next chapter in the Great Wall Taxi Korean Fiasco. But the journey back was relatively smooth and quiet.

On arriving back I pay, the taxi driver then gives me 5 RMB back that I shouldn’t have and I wonder if the whole “you have to pay me more now” was not a con but a loss in translation. Either way, we got to the Great Wall despite our laziness and had great fun with our new Korean friends and kept both kidneys, which felt like success at that point…

To see the original posting by Adam Fletcher on the Zig.co.uk

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