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THE WORLD WONDERS.

Article Excerpt
Byline: George Schroeder The Register-Guard

BADALING, China - You can buy a venti latte at Starbucks, and a bucket of fried chicken at KFC. A cable car will take you uphill, and a toboggan will slide you down. On the way to and from the parking lot, you can purchase trinkets from countless vendors, and the universal greeting is not "Ni hao" but: "Hella! Hella! T-shirt?"

Welcome to the Great Wall of China, a must-see tourist trap.

Less than an hour north of Beijing, you come to one of the world's wonders. It is crowded and the commercialism reeks. But what I like about the Great Wall, even with all the capitalism running amok, is this:

It's real.

Sure, it's spectacular. Walk atop the wall, even with every other tourist in China, and you marvel at the ingenuity and manpower it took, all those years ago, to construct thousands of miles of defensive ramparts atop bony mountain ridges.

But more than that, the Great Wall is the genuine article, not one of the saccharine wonders the Chinese government foisted upon the world this month for the Olympics - their attempt to portray the Beijing they wanted you to see instead of the Beijing that is.

For three weeks, China put its best face forward. But was it real or a...

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