Those of us fortunate to be able to visit any portion of China's Great Wall have relished the opportunity to stand atop this incredible edifice and enjoyed a momentary reverie about those long ago who built or manned it.

That reverie, however, will likely be greatly disturbed by souvenir vendors plying their wares atop the Wall. One of the most ridiculous 'souvenirs' being hawked behind tables by vendors atop the Wall is something called a 'peepee boy,' a 3-inch tall, brown plastic toy shaped like a little boy that the vendor pours water over and then squeezes to eject a small jet of water from a frontal orifice. Clearly, this has no relevance to the Great Wall, unless trying to tell modern visitors how ancient warriors used to relieve themselves from the high ramparts onto the surrounding mountainsides or attacking barbarians. The vendors incessant calls, "You buy peepee boy?!" makes one stop and laugh and rue the inappropriate scatological/urological humor of it.

According to one of the fellows from the Great Wall Administration Committee who showed us around,
"the vendors...(people like the woman who sold you scarves) just don't pay, and that they simply run away or pretend to be tourists when the offical come. As for the booths at the foot of the wall, the owners have to pay a certain amount of money (tens of thousands to hundreds of thousans yuan) each year depending on their locations." for a license to hawk their wares.

It's the itinerant ambulatory vendors who can most impact your experience atop the Wall, since they are not chained to their tabletop wares, but can follow, harangue and harass you for great portions of your walk (total length of the Great Wall at Badaling is 3,741 meters - starting from the fort, the north side is 1176 meters long, and the south side 2565 meters), as I discoved, so that the experience is rather like encountering an angry swarm of bees that you simply must outpace. It can be exhausting! If you interact with any walking vendor on the Wall - and admittedly they're selling some nice wares for reasonable prices - then expect to be harangued thusly: "You promise to buy from me! You buy from her, you buy from me! You promise to come back! You buy another! You buy (for) your wife!"

Thus, it will cost you more to buy gift trinkets from the vending stalls before the entrance to the Wall, but you'll be able to savor much more fully your experience on the Wall if you just say no to the peepee boy.