Jumping!

 So much happened on Saturday, I don’t even know where to begin. I will start with 10 AM Saturday morning. Me: asleep. I heard a knock at the door, it’s Josh. I went and answered it. Josh: “Hey we’re going bungee jumping in a half hour! It’s going to be really fun. I’ve been up looking up a bunch of stuff about it and it looks really neat! It’s like a huge national park with caves, ziplines, boat rides, etc. So do you want to go?” Me: “Ok.”

I got permission from Tina to just copy and paste this next part from her blog. She went into awesome detail. So the next few paragraphs are from Tina…

“So a group of us started out to go bungee it up. Only, today is the first day of National Week, the second largest holiday in China. There were people everywhere, many subway stations were completely closed, and the buses and roads were abnormally crowded.

Finally making it to the bus station where our bus out to the park started, there was a long, long, line (which I subconsciously thought was odd, because lines don't really exist in China). We asked a few people in line how long they thought it would be until the front of the line and most of the answers were 1-2 hours. Whoa! We did the math. 1-2 hours to board a bus. 1 hour to the park. Then we'd only have an hour to explore before the park closed. A large portion of the group was going to try to wait it out, but Abby, Josh, Adam, and I decided we were going to ditch it and try it another day.

The four of us were leaving, weaving our way through the crowd, when we got sucked into another wandering crowd. What we didn't know is that the tape helping with crowd control for buses had been cut up ahead and a massive wave of people was attempting to cut onto the bus. Josh was the first to realize where we were headed, and he turned around, glee all over his face, "I think I'm gonna go bungee jumping today!" Sure enough, we decided that if we could get on that bus we'd totally go. We got our Chinese mode on and started pushing our way through the side. I've seen people push to get on the subway, but never anything like this. There were people yelling left and right. There was a Chinese lady that blocked the entrance to the bus and wouldn't let anyone on. "My child, my child, my child!" She wasn't going to let anyone get past until she got her child with her. So the people in the crowd picked up her son and passed him to her over the heads of the people trying to push her out of the way. This is so China. In America, this would have been the rudest situation and fists would have started flying. But here it's nothing. I love it. I'm going to get back to the US and it's going to be hard to break my habit of pushing, squeezing, and cutting. And I might not have much sense of personal space for awhile.

Here's the crazy part. We actually managed to get on the bus. But then the ticket lady, confused as to why four white people were crowding on, tried to tell us we were getting on the wrong bus, that the bus to the great wall was the other way, and that we needed to get off. "NO. We're staying. This bus has our stop." The problem was, we didn't even know what stop we were going to. The people who knew the most about it were still back in line, because they hadn't given up the way we had, and they hadn't been presented the curious miracle of the broken crowd tape. So we yelled over to them, "HEY! WHAT'S OUR STOP?" Hahahahaha... what a scene. So finally we established that our stop was on this bus, but then she still demanded that we get off. "No seats, no seats, no seats," she kept repeating. "We're riding this bus. We'll sit in the aisles if we have to," replied Adam. She finally gave in and let us on. Of course, if the waiguoren are willing to go without a seat, everyone else wanted to get on, too, so we ended up leaving with a bus full of standing people. Before, we'd been watching the buses leave and there had only been enough people to fill the seats, and none more. We Americans start trends because we tend to get rowdy. I've got more stories about that, but they're for another day, so just take my word for it. We have a different mindset than the Chinese, and when we want something our way, we get it our way.

So the four of us spent two hours and fifteen minutes on a bus, sitting on the ground. Adam sat in the aisle next to the cutest little Chinese girl who spent a lot of time talking to him in her broken English. She sang songs for him and Abby, they sang songs to her... it was adorable. I, on the other hand, got stuck in the aisle next to a mom and her little boy (the little boy was actually the same boy that was handed over the crowd and onto the bus) who were both throwing up the entire time. Yaaaaaay. Every time they got out a new plastic bag, I barrelled my head into Josh's shoulder. Ain't no way I was smelling that stuff. After Adam and Abby's wonderful ride, and Josh and my unpleasant ride, we were all ready to get somewhere. But we really didn't know where we were going. Asking around, we found someone going to the same area as us, so we followed him and got on the next bus just fine.”

Wasn’t that a wonderful excerpt from Tina’s blog? So, after taking a few buses and a “taxi” (the guy tried to rip us off) we made it to the most beautiful place! It was awesome, because their were no foreigners, this is just a Chinese tourist spot. The sky was blue and we took a boat ride up a gorgeous gorge and arrived at the bungee jumping spot, the jump was about 200 feet over the river. We watched many brave people see their lives flash before their eyes. It looked safe and I felt good about it, so we paid our 25 bucks, wrote our name on a paper, stood on the scale and hiked up the staircase to the platform looking out over the gorge. No need to sign any waivers or anything. This is China. They did have us read a “Rules” sign before hiking the staircase though.

We got up to the top and it was a bit chilly. The wind was blowing, and I felt my stomach rolling. The guy strapped my feet in and had me stand on the platform. I had a strong grip to the pole next to me and I wouldn’t let go. The Chinese guy said something to me in English which I didn’t understand, but he was pointing to my feet and saying something. So I started freaking out and I was saying, “oh my gosh” like 10 times, and saying like, “Is something wrong? what do I do?” But I guess everything was fine, because he motioned to go, and he took my hands off of the pole that I was gripping onto, and placed them above my head, and then, “He pushed me.” He’s worked with a lot of people who freak out on that platform, so he knows to just push the ones who won’t jump on their own. This was Josh’s explanation of what my jump looked like…

“You were so gitty and excited and when the guy gave you a push you gave a gasp and your arms first go out to catch yourself but then realizing there is nothing there you must have freaked out because your arms start to flail and wave over your head but no sound…very interesting. Your first scream came as you arrived at the bottom of the fall or pretty close too the bottom. Then there were constant outbursts of screams/short high pitched yells. It was really funny though because when you fell your hands first flew around and then your arms tightened against your body but your legs kept on kicking like there was no tomorrow. I am not sure what it is with girls and kicking their feet when they fall but when we go bungee jumping there are always the girls that kick their feet like they are swimming or something. I guess those two sensations, falling and swimming, are pretty similar…Both of you and Tina went out like this like you were about to fall on a platform and you came to the sudden realization there was nothing solid until 100ft below you…and probably wondering who that random Chinese worker was who had pushed you off the bridge too.”

*Video of the jump coming soon.*
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When I got to the bottom and I was hanging upside down by my feet, there were two guys who held out a stick and told me to grab onto it so they could pull me into the boat. It wasn’t even a legit stick, it was like a long stick that they found on the ground that day. I grabbed a hold of it and they demanded me to sit. That was a crazy thing to say to someone who is still hanging upside down. So, I they helped me down, I got seated and they drove me back over to the dock. Wow, what an experience, I will only do once.

The rest of our day was spent exploring the park, including, A CAVE. Chinese caves must be a lot different, because this was nothing like a cave in America. We walked through the opening and from that moment on, I had a flashback of being in Disneyland sitting on a rowboat, hearing, “It’s a world of laughter, a world of cheer….It’s a small world after all, it’s a small, small world…” No joke! Everything was fake, the flowers, the trees, and the river was like painted on the ground! Haha. It looked just like that ride, but without the music and the animatronics. So, Adam and Josh hopped the fence into the “It’s a small world” scene and acted as animatronics. The Chinese people walked the path and took pictures. Some were confused, some were laughing.

*Video, also to come soon.*

It was a crazy day, but it was fun. We barely caught the last bus back to Beijing that night and made it home safe. What a day.