Thoughts on China

More pix here

Wow! That’s all I can say about the Great Wall (GW) (other than OUCH!).

Before I talk about it, let me say for those interested in going to China that I highly recommend the section I went to (Jin Shan ling to Si Ma tai, as well as the tour company that conducts it. I arranged to go through the hostel where I am staying (Lotus Hostel) and the whole day cost Y220 ($28). This includes the transportation from and to the hostel (three hours each way) and all the tickets you need to get from one end to the other, which had a combined face value of Y95, making the transportation cost Y125 ($16.50). The BEST part of the tour company was that they facilitated your trip, but didn’t get in the way. The biggest complaint I’ve seen in researching any type of arranged trip is the mandatory stop at a jade factory, or cloissone factory, with 30 minutes of sitting around waiting for you to buy something, for which the tour company gets a cut. The second part I was afraid of was that we would be herded like sheep, by a tour guide with a flag, as you see at all the major tourist spots in Beijing. As you read, you’ll see that these fears were unwarranted and they did just what you wanted them to do and no more.

I won’t bore you with the details of the 6:40 AM pickup or ride to the GW. They just dropped us off, bought the tickets for us (this was at about 10:00 AM) and said they would meet us at the end of the 5 mile walk at 2:30.

The local “tour guide”

You could take a cable car up to the start of the trail, or walk. Of course we all walked. It was here that I got a small sense of what we were in for. The walking around Beijing did not prepare me for the steep incline and I got quickly winded. There were a number of locals, all of whom have things to sell, that were sizing us up, figuring who would be the most likely to buy something from them. I can’t remember the name of the one who attached himself to me, but he was very friendly and it gave me another chance to practice my Chinese. He acted as a tour guide of sorts, insisted on carrying my bottle of water when going up steep steps and took pictures of me at a few spots. I thought to myself that I know he’s just doing this so he can make some money, but he is doing me a service and he could use the small amount of money more than I can, anyway. He walked
to the half way point with me, at which time I bought a book about this section of the GW from him for $20 - Y20 (the Bank of China had problems of some sort the day before, so I was out of RMB (Yuan, or Y, so I negotiated to give him $20 and he gave me back Y20 and the book). So, it was about $17.50 for two hours of his walking with me and the book. I felt a lot better about that than I would giving money to the beggars anywhere that want a handout without giving anything in return.

The hike

The first half was predominantly uphill and the second half was downhill. I was carrying a full size pack (since I couldn’t stuff my jacket in my daypack) and took five bottles of water with me, which I purchased at the hostel. Because I am so overweight, the severe uphill sections filled my legs with lactic acid from lifting so much and I had to stop more than I wanted to. It reminded me a little bit of my father, who was my age in 1976, hiking with my brother and I up mountains in Colorado. Slow and steady wins the race.

There was an alternate route, off of the GW, that some people took, who felt they couldn’t make it. It’s good they have this alternative, as I could see that some people could get into real trouble if they didn’t have an “escape route”. My “guide” asked me once if I wanted to use it and I told him that I didn’t come to the Great Wall to use the escape route! If nothing else, my pride would keep me going.

The views were breathtaking (which wasn’t hard, since I already was gasping for air!). No amount of pictures or video can compare with the panorama that the real thing presents. It was really nice that there weren’t tons of people on the Wall. There were some, of course, but it was easy to get a picture of just you and the Wall. From the pictures I’ve seen of the most popular tourist section (Ba da ling), this would be nearly impossible there. The other thing that is nice is that, while some portions of this have had repair work done, it is an older section of the Wall which is largely not restored.

Well, there are a lot of materials on the Web about the GW. I just want to say that none of them can prepare you for the majesty and grandeur of the real thing. The most amazing thing about the Wall, in my opinion, is not the scale of it (some 2400 miles, or some such astronomical number). That would be very impressive on flat ground, but what makes it almost unimaginable is the terrain on which it was built. I know I am completely out of shape, but to get up the mountains with a load of stone would be incredibly difficult, even if you were in great shape.

One last comment, in reading about the GW, I often come across thoughts that it is wide enough for four horses and this would be a way for messages to pass quickly up and down the wall. Well, horses are not going to have been going up and down these slopes very fast, if at all. I can see smoke signals from tower to tower could pass messages quickly, but not messengers. I could be wrong, of course, but when you get to a section that looks equivalent to a double black diamond ski slope, I can’t see a lot of four abreast horses romping down it.