"Chop 'em" he yells before taking off at full speed up uneven steps designed for people with significantly smaller feet.

"This feels like training camp," he says between heavy breaths on a day Team USA basketball practice was canceled. "I'm gonna ice down as soon as I get to the hotel."

Truthfully, if it were entirely up to Wade, he never would've left the hotel this day.

"I don't have that sightseeing bone in my body," he says.

But after a little convincing, he realized he'd be cheating more than himself if he passed up the chance to see one of the world's seven wonders.

"I wear this band on my hand every day that says, 'From Robbins, Illinois,"' he says, tugging at the black plastic band. "When I sat back and thought about it, all the kids back in Robbins and kids that never had the opportunity to really experience something like this in life, I had to experience it so I can go back and tell them about it. It's the Great Wall."

And it's already way more than he saw in Athens in 2004, when his detached Olympic basketball team lived on a cruise ship that he recalls leaving only twice for personal trips, once to a restaurant and once to the Louis Vuitton store.

This time around, Wade watched Michael Phelps win gold in the 200-meter breaststroke in the Water Cube. He even found his way to an Olympic boxing match.

Now, on the Wall, his sister Tragil is with him, handling the haul with relative ease. So is his cousin Antoine. You might recognize him from his TV cameos. He's the one sitting and laughing with Wade in his improvised commercial for Gatorade's G2. But the Wall is doing a number on him.

"I need a 20, coach," Antoine says, asking for a brief timeout (he actually needed a lengthy one on the bus ride over, suffering from a bit of car sickness).

Wade's sons Zaire, 6, and Zion, 1, aren't here, but their picture is near Wade's heart, on the face of his tag necklace.

Only a couple things could've improved this two-hour tour for Wade.

One, if he actually did hear the Great Wall vendor say "cornbread!" like he thought he did, rather than "cold beer!" which was actually uttered.

And two, if he didn't have to wait the half hour in the toboggan line before figuring out he was important enough, even in the Far East, to skip the annoying formality altogether.

Back at the bottom, autograph and photo seekers appear to be multiplying, but it doesn't keep Wade from bartering for better prices on a Chinese peasant hat and an "I climbed the Great Wall" T-shirt.