At this stage, I am at my last stop in my China adventure. I'm just leeching off the last of the hostel's wifi before they boot me out at check-out time and I have no more internet. Doesn't matter, the Great Firewall made it seem as if I didn't have that much internet in the first place.

It's ony been a short stay, but a sentimental one in many sense. I'm staying in the Nanguoluxiang hutong, which has been such an electric place to stay. Sure, it's full of tourist, but it's also full of the shops that I love, like cool pubs, cafes, stationery shops, food places, and the like. Almost like Hongdae, in Seoul, with lots of various side alleys that I could spend hours exploring. Very hip and chic and green (for Beijing standards anyway), but still suffocatingly full of people especially at night.

My Mandarin has gotten significantly better, and I can use it with confidence now (although not with alacrity). It's a shame that it's only gotten to this point when I'm about to leave. I had initially made shoddy use of it at the 798 Art District, which was not as cool as I remember it, but still worth seeing. It was just such a pain to get to (being far from the centre of town), and all the cool artsy stuff has slowly given way to gentrification and expensive cafes that cater to fashionable women posing for their Instagrams. The independent art studios I was used to was also slowly giving way to boutique shops that targeted rich foreigners and the street were lined with Mercedes's and Benzs. Event high-rises were being built around the area. Ah well, at least I got to experience a bit of it.

The highlight of this short, two-night stay in Beijing was nonetheless visiting the Great Wall at Mutianyu. I'd visited the wall at Badaling ten years ago as a teenager, and it remained one of the highlights of an otherwise bland Beijing trip. Mutianyu was still an improvement on Badaling, with far fewer tourists (especially if you head for the wall westwards). Most importantly, if you keep going west, you end up at the beginning of a part of the wall that has been unrestored. It's just covered in weeds and bushes, and in some places there's almost no space on the walkway that you have to tip toe slowly along the parapet (with a long drop to one side of you). There were like only 2 or 3 people that I bumped into on that path, and despite the low smog cover that made any views non-existent, it was still a thrill and as close to being 'off the beaten path' as possible. The excitement of adventure!

Speaking of adventure, here is a post-script of a different sort of adventure. In one of my darkest days of diarrhoea in a public Chinese squat toilet, I found my legs beginning to cramp while simultaneously having the blood squeezed out of them. Normally this isn't a worry--I've made attempts at squatting the gym numerous times. But this time, my feet were planted on slippery porcelain, and everytime I adjusted my legs, I would inadvertently slip closer to the canyon of poo between my legs.

And so it was that while I was playing on my phone, my heel slid out from under me and hovered over the Abyss for the Anus .... but I shifted my balance quickly enough to avoid being literally ankle-deep in shit. However, this manoeuvre led to me dropping my phone. Not into the bowl, but onto the floor.

Now the floor was covered in a slick layer of mystery juices, and without a doubt some of the mystery juices involved urine overspill from previous squatters. My phone was planted face-down in this mess, with yellowy bubbles forming on the surface. One whiff and it was enough to tell me that I screwed up. So with my clean hand, I had to wipe up and pull my pants up, while picking my phone gingerly away from me so I could clean it at the sink. Should've brought a Lifeproof case ...