Well done, Mr Chad Swanson, well played sir. It's not every morning that you reach for your copy of the China Daily, thumb through to the Hot Pot column and are faced with prose of such power, poise, dignity and just plain Manliness that all of your back hairs stand as one.
Yesterday, Chad wrote about his experience of climbing the Great Wall and how it transformed him from his previous status of mere "Man" to his current status of "Manly Man". Brave Chad wrote: "As I stood there on the mountain top, hair blowing in the wind, I could finally call myself a man."
Try and stop yourself from getting misty over sentiments such as those. It's nigh impossible, I know, and I admit that Man tears cascaded down my leathered cheeks as I grasped the audacity and scale of Chad's accomplishment.
Because real men cry too, you know. They cry and hold each other tenderly on corporate-funded wilderness trips where they strip naked, smother each other in Ox blood and howl at the moon while listening to Garth Brooks's No Fences. That's because Garth Brooks understands how painful it can be sometimes to be a Man, just like Chad found out while climbing the Great Wall in his quest for Greatness.
Sometimes being a Man means choosing to scale the wild quarters of the Wall, such as Jiankou, not the sissy paved parts like Badaling. After all, there's no blood on Badaling's fresh bricks.
When it comes to bloodsports, real men don't hunt with weapons unless it's a blunt knife. That's because only the real-est of Real Men comprehend that opening the throat of another creature is something that must be done while holding your prey as you arrange the meeting with its maker.
I think there's a Native American tribe that advocated this particular style of killing as the Manliest way to slay; to be honest, the guy who told me this wasn't actually a Native American at all, he was a drunk Australian expat that I met at Bar Blu in Sanlitun. But by the way that this particularly inebriated Man recounted this knowledge, I could tell he was among the Real-est of Real Men. He even divulged other snippets of wisdom, such as: "If you want a chick, just take her mate".
I'm sure the villain from Three Amigos - I think his name was El Guapo - said something similar to that one time. El Guapo was one of the Real-est Manly Men ever, even if he was a fictional character.
Gazing out onto the sprawling wilderness below him, Chad must have been the envy of the known Masculine world standing atop the Great Wall as curious onlookers gazed upon his statuesque robustness. I only hope those lucky enough to witness his achievement wore sunglasses to prevent temporary blindness from the sheer brilliance of this foreigner's aura.
I wonder though, if my mother or sister climb the Great Wall, does that also make them Great Men?
(China Daily by Ben Davey June 27, 2007)