Note: Guys, tell me if you think I should expand on this short piece and turn it into a longer story.
“CAPICOO Papa!” Cliff slammed the Domino on the stone slab table. “TOMA!” Cliff danced, moving his shoulders around like the old Harlem shake. Now the score was 116 to 400. Jing and Dave were kicking our asses.
This is how the dominoes fall though. Game one equals one hundred. Game two equals seventy-five. Game three equals fifty. Finally, game four equals twenty-five points. A chichazo equals one hundred and a capicoo equals one hundred. A chichazo is when you end the game with a double zero and a capicoo is when you end the game with a domino that can be played on either side. Jing won the first game with a double zero, two hundred points right off the bat. They then went on to win the rest of the first four games.
Generally, my attitude, regarding this kind of butt whooping, would be really negative. However, this wasn’t just dominoes. This was dominoes on the Great Wall of China. Cliff and I had beaten teams from every borough in New York. There was no way I was going to let my girlfriend and my best friend’s cousin beat us. Not at the greatest moment ever in the history of the Bronx X-treme Dominoes League. This was the first time dominoes had ever even been brought to the Great Wall.
Unfortunately, we never got to finish that game. On the Great Wall there are no lights. Only the stars and the moon. During warm summer nights you can barely see the stars because the fog in the mountains is so thick. Since we didn’t really have the stars and the moon, we had Cliff’s iPod and my Nintendo DS. It was dark because we were outlaws, camping where we had no business camping. Our sleeping bags laid out on the floor inside the dusty, old garrison. Only one word could describe Dave’s idea to camp on the Great Wall, illegal. Luckily we walked three miles up the Wall to a sign that read, “Non-Tourist section. No Admission!”
The journey to this desolate spot was a long, steep climb. We arrived in a marketplace flooded with random Chinese souvenirs. Things like spirit masks, fans, and t-shirts that read, “I heart BJ.” I assume this is a play on the “I heart NY” shirts, but for Beijing. Too bad Chinese people don’t get American humor. In any case, we needed food if we were going to make the hike up the mountain and the wall. We went to the most logical place we saw in that marketplace, Subway. I had a foot-long chicken teriyaki with cheddar, all the veggies they had, and a pinch of vinegar. We then bought water, because it was ninety-two degrees, and tissue, for lonely trips into the woods, from a tiny Chinese woman who seemed to be about a hundred, or ninety-two if you believe in those sorts of coincidences. With our sleeping bags, water, tissue, and sandwiches we set off on the long journey up hill.
At about the hundredth step a man dressed in a blue button down and black slacks offered us a ride on his donkey. Unfortunately that ass wasn’t free, so we kept it walking. And walking, and walking. And walking…Did I mention there was a ton of walking? It was nice, but we were still just walking up the hill to get to the Wall. Finally we arrived at more steps, these, Dave assured me, were the steps to the Great Wall. Old stone steps made of granite bricks. We ascended these steps and saw why the wall is called Great. Monumental, massive, opulent, a true behemoth, and a dragon that sleeps, rising and falling with the mountaintops and hillsides.
After a short series of steps we arrived at the first military outpost. This watchtower, set right into the wall, was little more than a stone rectangle with small alcoves for sleeping soldiers, minuscule windows for keeping watch, and tiny steps leading up to the top. We climbed to the top. It was breathtaking, even more so than all those steps. To the north and south, the mountain forests spread out as far as the horizon. To the east and west the Great Wall stretched onwards, like a road to heaven. Jing and I took out our camera, but this bothered Dave, “Guys, this view is weak. “
“What do you mean?” We ask.
“This is only watchtower seven, we’re going to twelve.” It was thus how we walked even more.
It took us about an hour and a half to walk the rest of the dragon’s back.
Watchtower twelve is the head of the dragon, because the Chinese government will allow tourists to walk no further. With the sun setting to our backs and the vines overgrowing the Wall to our front we settled on a stone slab, took out the dominoes, and decided to bring a little bit of Puerto Rico to one of the biggest structures in the entire world.
