Rick, et al.,  

So it turns out that you can't see The Great Wall from space. Who started that urban legend? Jayson Blair? It turns out you can't even see The Great Wall from like 500 feet away if the smog is bad enough, but when you do see it, man is it impressive. Going to Mutianyu today was the best $50 dollars of company money I've ever spent. Did you know that the wall, even though much of it is in disrepair, is nearly 4,000 miles long? Our guide today said that a few people a year actually try and walk the entire length of it, and most of the time, they're eaten by wolves about halfway through. (Something may have been lost in translation, but I prefer to keep that urban legend alive.)

Michael Phelps supposedly swims 55 miles a week during his training, which means it would take him 72 weeks to swim from one end of the wall to the other. I bet his coach, Bob Bowman, would be really interested in that kind of program, but I imagine Michael might balk.

Anyway, here are five other things I learned on our trip to The Great Wall today, which was made possible thanks to our awesome Chinese translator, Stephen. I wish I could remember his Chinese name, but he said we could call him Stephen, which just proves how cool he was.

1. We don't have to worry about China overtaking America as the world's greatest superpower because, according to Stephen, we have the three most powerful weapons in the world: Chicken McNuggets, Hollywood movies and Disneyland. Stephen said his 4-year-old daughter already loves McDonalds McNuggets, even if he thinks they taste like glue, and that she wants him to take her to visit Snow White's home as soon as possible. "American has nothing to worry about," he said, with a hearty chuckle. I'm not sure you can overstate the incredible lure our bad fast food and cheesy animation has over the children of the world. We may resemble Rome in the autumn of its empire, but by god, we still know how to fry up a piece of disgusting meat that is irresistible.

2. Our friend Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports looked like he was going to commit a homicide about halfway through our 45-minute walk up the steps to The Great Wall. And the person he wanted to bludgeon to death with his digital camera was me. Ok, so maybe it was a bit mean for me to demand that we all walk up the steep incline instead of taking the cable car, and maybe we should have bought water at the bottom of the hill instead of the top, but didn't you have a greater sense of accomplishment when we finally reached the summit? Chinese historians speculate that between 2 and 3 million people died building The Great Wall, and even though I worried C-Rob was going to include me among them, I figured the least we could do was avoid the country club route. What kind of Americans would we be if we had instead taken the cable car and ate chicken McNuggets the entire trek? Ugly Americans, that's what. I may be a chubby American, but I refuse to enforce those stereotypes abroad.

3. Stephen wanted to know how the journalism industry was doing in the United States, and I gave him the best answer I could. (Do you think it was too much when I curled up in the fetal position and started silently weeping?) He said that journalists have it good in China, and that they are very well respected, because they always tell the truth. He also said that the Chinese government always tells the truth, which seemed like a rosy outlook on the situation to me. On our way down from the wall, I bought two communist party shirts for like $10, in part because I wanted to rock out like Zac de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine, and in part because if I have to interview any Chinese people this week, I can always slip one on and they'll know my propaganda comes from a person they can trust.

4. Can you believe there is a city in China with almost 33 million people? It's true. Chongqing. I felt kind of stupid admitting to Stephen that I'd never even heard of Chongqing before when it's clearly one of the biggest cities in the world, but according to the Internet (so you know you can trust it), it's true. In the municipality, there are really that many people living together. There are places like that in China that would make downtown Manhattan look like ranch-style housing. How do you even sneeze without toppling 20 of your friends like dominos? My head hurts just thinking about the tryouts for their high school handball teams. I bet it's easy to meet girls though. If you don't like the gals in your neighborhood, you can always take a walk and meet one of the other 17 million available women out there.

5. When you order fish in China, and they say it's fresh, they really mean it, because they actually have the fish swimming around in a tank like 20 feet from your table. And I don't mean a tank like a fish tank. I mean like a cement pond filled with everything from trout to what I swear looked like sharks. That may have been the most enlightening aspect of the day. We sat down for a nice meal after coming down from the wall, ordered some local trout, and a few minutes later, a cute little Chinese girl is wrestling with a live fish and handing it to the cook. I know you're a vegetarian and all, Maese, but I think you've got to appreciate how manly and rugged that is to watch your food caught and killed just feet from you. The PETA people would probably freak out about this, but they're too busy posing Amanda Beard naked in front of the Swim Cube to concern themselves with less sexy projects like rural fish restaurants. Beard is willing to get naked for pretty much anyone with a camera at this point, and frankly I'm so over whatever it is she's selling. Wake me up if Natalie Coughlin decides she'd rather go naked than wear fur or eat fish that was clubbed to death in the back of a restaurant.

(Great Wall/AP; Coughlin/Getty Images)