Hiking.

Hiking.


This past weekend we went to Fragrant Hills in Beijing's Northwest to go hiking and pick up trash, trying to help at least a part of the environment in China. The trip was organized by CET, our study abroad program. It was an early trip, so everyone was a little yawn-y after sleeping on the half-hour bus ride. When we woke up we were surrounded by mountains.



Our leader, a cool girl named Lauren who’s the American head of the Beijing CET office, passed out garbage bags and bamboo tongs and we all suited up. We met our guide, an intrepid looking member of the mountain’s hiking club who brandished his hiking pole while Beijing-accented Chinese spilled out of his mouth. Then we started up the mountain.


The hike was listed as medium to high difficulty. It was real hiking, rock climbing and all. It’s really incredible how you can be in the middle of one of the biggest cities on the Earth and in half an hour be in the mountains. There’s no hint of the city out there until your head pokes through the trees and you see the blankets of gray over tiny buildings. I’ve loved every trip we’ve taken out of the city and this was no exception. You can feel the air quality change, and you are utterly surrounded by wild forest.


Our guide stops every so often to tell us about a particular tree, a plant, a little piece of the place. He’s really proud of the mountain and it’s not hard to see why. For all of Beijing’s development, places like this still exist because people care deeply about them.


Beijing’s interaction with nature is an interesting one, I think. On the one hand there are the people like our guide and our fellow climbers. Among the people that passed us on their way to the top were spry seniors clambering over the rocks like children and a shaved-headed middle aged man climbing in shoes and track shorts and little else. Needless to say, they’re all in pretty good shape. There are also meandering couples listening, for some strange reason, to traditional music blasting out of their cell phones as they walk. It’s an odd mix of wanting to throw yourself into ‘nature’ and yet to stay out of it. I think the biggest motivation of all though is just to enjoy yourself. It’s nice being out here. It’s good exercise and it’s a beautiful place.


Our caravan of students, about 10 in all, stops whenever we see garbage on the ground. There’s actually not too much, outside of the omnipresent cigarette butts at resting spots. Our guide explains that he doesn’t often have Chinese people participating in these programs, most of the time the trash-collecting groups are foreign tourist volunteers.

When we get to the top of the mountain, we find a small ramshackle house surrounded by pecking hens and vegetable patches. The front room is a restaurant with an old couple beckoning from inside the doorway. Behind it looms a monstrous wood and cement lodge, not yet finished. Off to the side is a futuristic looking signal tower, all steel and yellow paint. The workers tell us it communicates with weather satellites.


And here we are standing on the ground. As we start to climb back down the mountainside, we cross through a few flat plains of grass and trees that look like plateaus surrounded by the valleys of the mountains.


We walk down roads that were built for cars and trucks, I assume, to make their way up to the top. The gutters are littered with cigarette butts and drooping plants. There are strange bugs and a praying mantis. The tanned cement stretches out and disappears into the trees.


We spend a good 3 hours getting back down, constantly going down thinner paths into denser woods. Still, piles of discarded food cartons crop up every so often. As we make our way down the thinnest trail, we dodge underbrush crowding our legs and spiderwebs around our heads. Our now full trash bags tied to our backpacks, our shoes skid on rocks that skitter down in front of us.


When we finally reach the ground, we land in the Beijing Botanical Gardens. There, a more genteel version of nature awaits those who may not want to confront it on such a personal basis.