The Great Wall
Pictures: The Great Wall
The trip to the Great Wall started out early, around 8AM. I got up rather grumpily, as I usually do, but especially so after the late night out at one Beijing's bajiu's a few hours before. I managed to stumble through the shower, pull on my many layers of clothing (bloody cold in Beijing, probably around 6C that day), blearily checked my email, met up with the rest of the group and slowly followed them out the door, clutching the croissant I'd grabbed at the hostel entranceway.
The group of us made our way to the subway station about a 15 minute walk away, took it up to Dong-si-shi-tiao (I think), and walked towards where we thought the bus station was. We ended up running into a guy selling rides on his minibus. Alice haggled with him in Putongua, found out how long, how much, etc, etc (I was off to the side, rather disgruntled because I had just found out I'd been out-voted and we were going to the Simatai section of the Great Wall rather than Mutianyu section, where I'd been recommended to go). We ended up paying 70 kuai a person for the ride there and back, and judging by how happy the driver was, we paid too much. In any case, he lead us over to his old, rickety minibus and introduced us (more than the taxi drivers did) to the Chinese style of driving.
Let me explain. The chinese style of driving involves these things: weaving in and out of traffic lanes, leaving barely enough room to pass the other vehicles; making new lanes in between the others when the lanes there aren't sufficient for you; disregarding stop lights all together as long as you're in the front of the line of traffic; trying not to hit bicycles & pedestrians who don't seem to care that there are maniacs driving at high speeds on the 3-lane one-way highways; blaring the horn constantly, all while going about 100-110km/hr. And I thought Philly drivers were bad.
After a couple hours of this undoubtably fascinating driving, we ended up at our destination: the bottom of the mountain with one section of the Great Wall on top. We ended up taking a ski-lift up a large portion of the way, and walking the rest, lungs burning from the high altitude, stopping every so often to catch our breaths and take off another layer of clothing.
In that way, we eventually reached the top and then took a couple minutes for another breather as we looked around at the magnificant view. There was a large drop on either side of the wall, with the wall stretching for miles in both directions. As we looked, we spoke with the Chinese followers we had obtained (trying to sell picture books of Beijing). They told us that the tower we were at was number 8 out of the the 14 towers that made up the Simatai section of the wall. On the one side of the wall is Simatai-Beijing, and on the other was the Hubei province. The stones we came across on the wall that had chinese writing on it were the old, orginal stones, some 530 years old. (Or so they said.)
We decided to walk up the higher part of the wall to the towers 9+. Inside of tower number 10, our self-appointed guides showed us a corner were there were niches in the walls, and indicated that we could climb up. After a short discussion on the wisdom of the idea, and looking cautiously around, we decided to go. Alice went first, and managed to scramble up with our guides & Al supporting her. Meghan went next, and she had a better time of it because she was taller than Alice, yet also supported by our guides & Al. Then, it was my turn. The first time I tried, my bags & various layers proved too much for me, so I took off my bag & a sweatshirt and tried again. This time I was able to make it, and climbed on top.
The view there wasn't that much different, just a little bit further up, and Al got a picture of the four of us there. (Toshki came up after me, but Al discovered a fear of heights.) After the picture, we all climbed back down, and I managed to hit my knee on the wall doing so, which is now a lovely shade of red, yellow & blue. So now I can say, as someone suggested to me, "See my knee? I got it from the Great Wall." Yet it's not exactly my idea of a souvenir.
In any case, we went a bit farther, climbed up about as far as we could safely go, took a few pictures, and headed back down, past tower 8 where we came up, and down to the other Simatai entrance, which was called the "Sliding pass". As we went down, followed by our Chinese followers who had only managed to sell some postcards to us, I was quite thankful that the pass didn't live up to its name.
Eventually we reached the bottom, met our bus driver, and survived the two-hour drive back to our hostel (in the dark this time). By the time I got back to my room I was exhausted from running around the wall, and a cold that had started developing the day before, and went right to bed, ending my day seeing the Great Wall.
Posted by blablues at October 27, 2002 09:50 PM
