Students hike Great Wall, gain lasting memories

Graduate student Dave Tanner said the fourth day of the School of Health Physical Education and Recreation's five-day walk of China's Great Wall was the most difficult.\nThe group's water was running low, and the day's hike lasted seven hours, Tanner said. The wall narrowed to 12-inches wide in spots. Looming on either side were 20-foot drops. The wind blew at about 30 miles per hour.\nThe previous night, the group had camped out on the Wall, in an old guard tower.\n"It was like magic," Tanner said of looking at the moon from the Great Wall.\nForty students, faculty and staff members with ties to HPER returned from an 11-day trip to China and a five-day, 50 mile hike of China's Great Wall last week. It was the first official international hike permitted in the closed sections by China's Great Wall Commission.\nThe walk celebrated 10 years of friendship and cooperation between HPER and the Beijing University of Physical Education, which was represented by about 20 walkers. The partnership has promoted cultural exchanges and healthy lifestyles.\nDespite the challenges of hiking along the wall and the training beforehand, participants said the trip was an amazing experience.\n"It was the trip of a lifetime," said Mary Stroh, HPER's head librarian.\nStroh said a highlight for her was walking along sections that had never been open to foreigners before. Most of the Wall in those parts was rubble, she said, but it was worth it. \nChinese-American culture nights filled with song, dance and food were another highlight for Stroh. As HPER's librarian, Stroh donated six boxes of books to the BUPE library, which in turn donated Chinese books to the HPER library.\nDay One of the trip started with IU's walkers featured in a front page story in the Beijing Morning Post newspaper. The group then went to an orientation about the Wall at Beijing University of Physical Education and attended a Friendship Luncheon. After that the walkers began their Great Wall Walk.\nIU's representatives donated playground equipment at sites along its hike in China.\nHeather Dale Barcelona, Bloomington resident and wife of a graduate student, said the walk was more strenuous than she had expected but called every day she spent on the Wall "magnificent."\nOne day during the walk, the group came across "tin men," made of Coke cans, lined up like "little soldiers." Barcelona said she was struck by the contrast between modern art and the old Wall.\nBarcelona said her favorite activity on the trip was Tai Chi lessons.\n"It looks very easy, but of course the people teaching us have done it since they were 6 years old," Barcelona said. "Once you start to do it you realize it takes a lot of balance, skill and patience."\nTanner said the trip shattered every preconception he had about China.\n"I thought 'this is a Communist country: It'll be drab and the people will be unhappy,'" Tanner said. "It's beautiful and the people are very happy."\nHe said everyone was touched emotionally by the warmth extended by the Chinese. By the end of the trip, Tanner said, people on both sides were crying.\nEric Myers, president of the HPER alumni board and executive director of the Indiana Natural Resources Foundation, said the trip was a way to experience another culture and gain a new appreciation for ours. He said China shares the same latitude, but is a vastly different world.\nMyers said vast similarities existed between people that live in very different countries.\n"I went into it thinking we would be celebrating the relationship between two universities and left with friendships I think will last a lifetime," Myers said.\nParticipants said they were looking forward to a return trip.