The Great Wall: Yes it is (Great)
China is just so full of spectacular history and so much of it is in the vicinity of Beijing. The Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, Mao’s Tomb and Tiananmen Square are all very close to each other. A bit further out you get to the greatest icon of China, the Great Wall.
Most of these package-for-foreigner tours go to Badaling, a spectacular part of the wall. When Nixon made his historic 1972 visit to China, all of the photo ops were done at Badaling. Most likely if you’ve seen a picture of the wall, you’ve seen Badaling.
I didn’t go there.
I went to Juyongguan. It is slightly closer, but more importantly, it doesn’t have a lot of foreign tourists (although that might have changed. Juyongguan was used as a stop on the most recent version of The Amazing Race.).
I knew that if I was going to see the wall, that I wanted to spend some time there, at least a couple of hours. Most tours for foreigners to the Great Wall only give you 45 minutes there. The rest of the day you are either on a bus or being sold jade or traditional medicines. The hotel that I was staying at had one of those typical tours: 45 minutes at the Great Wall, two hours at the jade factory, one hour at the Chinese medicine factory, 30 minutes at the kings’ tombs. No thanks. These tours aren’t designed around your needs, they’re designed to separate you from your money.
I had a guide book with me. I’d like to say that it was good, and for this particular adventure it was, but the Beijing aspects of the book were so wrong that book was almost useless (Beijing has a pretty simple subway system, but the subway map had lines and transfer points that didn’t exist while missing other lines and transfer points).
The guide book gave a detailed description of how to get to the Great Wall without taking one of these “selling” tours. Public transit is much cheaper, and gives you more time at the wall. You still have to come back on the same bus, and the cheap bus doesn’t take the direct highway, and you don’t get to go to the kings’ tombs. That’s OK.
It took a bit to find the correct bus. There are sales agents standing around, but they are offering a number of destinations.
So I found the bus and boarded. I was the only foreigner. In the corner meant that others could decide if they wanted to sit beside me. A young family did. The man spoke some English and his daughter spoke a bit.
We had some interesting conversations about Chinese history and Mao Tse Dong. It was very informative getting to talk to an average person. I had a different understanding of recent history. My understanding is that during World War 2, the U.S. helped Chang Kai Shek repel the Japanese in the south while Mao was doing the same from the north. Chang’s part (and America’s assistance) is not part of the story in China. This makes sense, as Chang was later a foe of Mao and Chang’s forces eventually lost everything except Formosa, now called Taiwan. China is not a particularly closed society these days, you don’t have censors following foreigners around, but there’s still official histories.
Driving to the Wall was interesting too, as it gave me a peek at rural Chinese life. The land around Beijing is not the stereotypical rice paddy, it looks more like the farmlands back home. Then we were driving through low hills and every once in a while you could catch a glimpse of the wall. You could feel the excitement building.
Once we got to the Great Wall, a tour guide got on the bus and counted us. Then there was a delay with getting off the bus. The guide came back on and talked to everyone, and this led to protests and noise. The man beside me explained that they were changing the schedule. We would be at the wall for an hour, then we were going to a jade store.
At no point did anyone say that this was because of my presence, but people were looking at me. The man beside me asked me if I wanted to go to the jade store, and I emphatically shook my head no. As he turned to the guide and spoke, I looked at her and shook my head no. But this didn’t settle it. The argument continued.
I told the man, and he told the guide, that if they wanted to leave early, I could take a taxi back to Beijing. I actually didn’t know if I could do that. I hadn’t seen a taxi anywhere near the wall yet. I also might not have had enough money on me. Apparently this was completely unacceptable, as the bus couldn’t leave unless it had everyone back on. The man beside me smiled to me and said, “they won’t leave without all of us.”
Then they started arguing how long we were staying (I was told). The passengers wanted three hours, the tour guide wanted one so we could go to the jade store. Eventually, it was decided that we would get two and a half hours.
At Juyongguan, the wall passes through a valley and over a river. On one side are low hills and on the other is a climbing mountain range. From the bus park, beside the river, either direction is up and it was a hot, humid day. This isn’t as picturesque as Badaling, where you can see the wall running on ridges for kilometers, but it was still very beautiful. Unfortunately, Juyongguan isn’t far enough away from Beijing to escape the overcastting pollution.
Climbing the wall was so amazing. The higher you got, the greater the view. Every little bend of the wall was the perfect spot to take a photo. Every corner had a building filled with vendors selling water, t-shirts or name chops. Near the base, where a large U-shaped structure was located, there were terracotta warriors transplanted from Xi’an.
The climb to the highest point was not easy in the weather, and very few people did it. Even the man from the bus didn’t go the whole way to the highest point. Unfortunately, when the crowds thinned out, I ended up in close proximity to a couple of Russian girls. When we got to the highest point, they immediately pulled out a knife and started carving their names into the wall.
During the climb up it hadn’t been apparent just how uneven the steps were. If you look in the third picture, above, you can see how worn the steps are. Climbing down, every step was a shock to my knees, and by the time I got to the bottom, my legs were very sore. On the way down, I stopped to have a name chop made (a square stamp of your name in Chinese. In some places, these are as legally binding as your signature.). I rejoined the family that had sat with me on the bus.
They were still trying to figure out how to say my name. The daughter wanted me to stamp her hand with my new name chop. Once I did, everyone could read it and say my name reasonably well. So I know the name chop is accurate.
In the end, we had about three hours at the wall. Once we were back on the bus, the tour guide again wanted to go to a jade store, but there was an uproar (I didn’t participate at all, but it was pretty obvious from the anger and gesturing that I was being discussed.). Whatever the argument, we went back to Beijing.
