China 2.0 Day -2: Mutianyu, Great Food & Beijing Tweetup

The morning started on a rather confused note…

You see, writing tweets just around 06:20 isn’t exactly what I’m good at. The first tweet featured me in semi-dormant mode. (The keyboard was proof.)

That’s because I was about to head off to a day with @shelisrael, @elliottng, @winserzhao, @yenlee and @JensThraenhart. I’ve probably been to the Great Wall too many times, but Mutianyu itself was a first for me.

Just too many foreigners are sardinized to the super-cliché part of the Great Wall at Badaling and Juyongguan than deemed healthy, so we decided to head on over to Mutianyu instead. Unfortunately, things seemed less than “isolated”: busloads of people were seen at Mutianyu — just as “bad” as Badaling. (Yours truly often does highway rides on roads with near-zero traffic, by the way.)

But hey, we had to head to the Great Wall after satisfying our tummies first, right? And where better than — well, outside the Huilongguan Line 13 Subway station, where @shelisrael and @JensThraenhart were downright adventurous — and fulfilled their call of alimentary duty with a mere USD 0.22 breakfast?

A far cry from the threat of instant hospitalization and horrible stomach kernel panics, the “Twenty-Two Cent Breakfast” actually turned out to be great. Fellow munchers (or munching tweeters, rather) noted that it was a great breakfast overall — price wasn’t a factor.

Eventually, we made it to the Great Wall. Just before getting off the minivan, our @elliottng linked up once again with the omnipresent-it-seemed @christinelu. Apparently, the “cheating” didn’t work; yours truly started mass tweeting on route, keeping @christinelu and Co well informed of what was happening with #china20 up in The Jing.

The climb to the Great Wall was challenging, but things got off to a cheated start (read on: there’s a reason why) as we faked ourselves up high thanks to this human invention called a “cable car”. The six of us were packed (not unlike the average Beijing Subway rush hour sardine car) into one car. Twice did I have to resort to the immortal “please get ready for your arrival” as the cable car touched in at the other end.

At this point, @shelisrael was probably too excited. Minutes after getting off the cable car, he tried to tweet to the world that he was now standing on the Great Wall of China. What an achievement. Unfortunately, this trick didn’t get pulled off that easily — the app decided to take a day off, dashing any hopes of “live tweet coverage” of Shel and the Wall.

The entire group covered nearly all of one half of the Mutianyu wall. Things weren’t easy. At times, there was a staircase with not even a barrier — so if you tweeted and fell into the thing, oh well. (You’ll probably not be able to tweet in hospital if things get serious.) There was also an unwritten Twitter ban when we made it up the last flight of “stairs” to the topmost outpost. But made it we finally did.

The Great Wall got its more mobile bits tested today as I started mass tweeting from the scene. The signal was great about 70% of the way through, but after that, the signal went blank. (Oddly enough, I could still send a tweet out by SMS at the top of the climb.) Coverage, obviously, was lacking for the bit beyond the “legal limit” — as in the “wild” or unrestored (as yet in full) part of the Great Wall.

The wild part was wild alright. It became next to impossible to finish this stretch — and the descent was truly scary. Every one of us that made it up there had to use the actual wall itself to do any mileage downhill — unless one of us wanted to slide down the whole thing.

And slide we did. Well, actually @shelisrael’s mineral water did the sliding. It was a terrifying sight, seeing Shel’s mineral water pop out, roll and crash land. Eventually we recovered it — and Shel finished the remaining bit of mineral water. Luckily, unpolluted and with no bits of the Great Wall in the water… Suffice it to say that all of us made it back down in one piece.

We were next treated to a fantastic lunch (this is not a “everything-must-be-good” Xinhua-ish report; this was a truly great lunch the way my tastebuds think of it). The food soon started filling up the whole table, and it was quite a sight seeing a mix of locals and foreigners devour the whole thing. We were the only “foreigner” group in the entire restaurant — and Shel and gang made for quite a sight for those Huairou locals.

Late afternoon saw some times of rest before the evening Tweetup began. @winserzhao did the magic in organizing the Tweetup.

The whole gang was here, it seemed. Beijing Twitter Queen, @sioksiok, was there as always, as was @pdenlinger, @awflasher, @poeloq, @moderntime, and many others. (If we forgot to mention you, carve your name in in our conveniently-placed Comments textarea!)

The weirdest thing yet that this Tweetup saw no real mass tweeting.

A dead m.twitter.com for yours truly’s mobile devices and a nonfunctional wifi network really got things rolling — offline, that is. The laughter (even the tears at one point), the good food, and the occasional SMS tweeting made the tweetup special –

– as remarked by @poeloq, but someone stole the whole show away:

The actor you’re seeing now is a real miracle in the making. She could easily flip her masks with a nod or a quick touch (it seems). There were about a dozen different masks she must have worn. It was an incredible show, and applause could be heard nearly uninterrupted at times.

Pity, though, that it lasted only about five minutes or so. But those five minutes were the most magical.

Mask-wise, that is. You want more magical moments? (And more tech moments too, we think.) They’re still to come on #china20. Stay tuned to CN Reviews!