During Elena's Sr. year, we wanted to do a girls trip to China but found it was very difficult to get visas from Taiwan. Our attempts led to our passports being lost in the mail and many hours on the phone to get them back - without ever receiving the visas. Earlier this year, China instated a 144 hour transit visa allowing us to start in Taiwan, spend up to 144 in Beijing before continuing on to a third country. This was the perfect solution for us as we PCS'd out of Taiwan. I was honestly a bit nervous waiting in the very small line that this was not going to work and we would be stuck in the airport for six days. Fortunately, we only needed to fill out a simple form and show our departure tickets. They stamped everything multiple times and we were on our way to our adventures in China.
The main thing we wanted to see in China was the Great Wall. It's really unfathomable to imagine. But I didn't want to just see the Great Wall with a million other tourists, I wanted to experience the Great Wall. To hike it for hours letting the greatness of it all sink in. We hired a guide who picked us up from our hotel bright and early and rode 3 hours to where the road ended. After walking thousands of stairs through the jungles of Taiwan, I didn't expect dirt paths and forests in China. (Silly, I know.) We hiked up hill for an hour before reaching the wall. We found over the two days that our guide was a bit funny with photos. He had a nice camera with him and would have us pose for every single photo. We would try to tell him that we just wanted a nice one of us standing in a certain spot, but no, there must be a pose of some sort. So we began the wall with a picture of us touching it.
The air was crystal clear for the two days we were hiking the wall. I've read news stories about the extreme pollution in China but a wind had come from the North blowing the pollution away. (Probably to Taiwan where they complain about the smog rolling in from China as a wall of filth polluting the island.) Lucky us because we had stunning views our entire hike. In fact, at one point we could even see the city of Beijing in the distance.
The wall is actually three walls built at different times in history. The Quin Wall, the Han Wall and the Ming Wall. Construction began in the 5th century BC to establish boarders between waring states. In 221 BC the First Emperor demolished the interior walls between unified states but kept the north and northwestern boundary walls and linked them together. Construction continued until 220 AD. These original walls have mostly been taken back by nature. When we talk about the Great Wall, we are referring to the most recent wall from the Ming Dynasty built from 1368-1644.
Our hike the first day began along the Jiankou section then changed into the Mutianyu section. This was the oldest section we hiked. It has not been repaired or restored in any way. Our guide gave us a map of China showing the Great Wall. He then highlighted the sections we would hike. They looked like two small dashes on a very long line. The Great Wall is 8,851 kilometers long. (That's approx. 6,000 feet or the length of the US boarders between Mexico and Canada!) It really is hard to imagine the length of this wall and the amazing feat in building it until you have walked for hours on it snaking up and down and back up again. The non-restored sections are crumbling and overgrown with vegetation. We didn't talk too much as we were walking. I think we were all absorbing how ancient and desolate the structure we were walking on is. We encountered very few people that first day.
The construction of the wall is amazing. Our guide claimed that slave labor was not used in the construction, rather as part of your military service you built 3.3 meters of the wall during 2 years of service. Of course you didn't work alone. A company of 153 soldiers worked together to build 500 meters of wall. The rock was quarried near the wall. Each block weighs 2 tons and was moved with crowbars on rolling logs. The terra-cotta bricks, 24 lbs each, were made in the valleys and passed up the mountain hand to hand. As the wall moves up and down the mountains, the bricks follow the curve of the land rather than being horizontal. It begs the question of how did they get the bricks to stay in place while waiting for the mortar to dry? The Chinese were very ingenious by using sticky rice. This was the most expensive part of the building process. They ground and mixed the glutenous rice then immediately stuck a brick onto the wall. The rice mortar held like super glue and is still holding 500 years later. It's amazing.
By the end of the day we were wiped out. It was a lot of difficult climbing up and down the crumbling steps. Our guide took us to a restaurant where we enjoyed a traditional dinner of many foods we were already accustomed to. We drove for an hour or two to what had once been a small farming village where we stayed in an old home converted into a hotel. It was clean and quaint and had we not been exhausted we would have enjoyed walking along the river a bit.
Day 2 we awoke early to see the sun rise over the wall. The sun had just peaked out when we arrived. We found a quiet spot to enjoy the early morning rays. Tucked on one of the decks of a watchtower, we enjoyed the breakfast the hotel had sent along. We were rewarded with another beautiful day for walking. We had driven to the Jinshanling section of the wall. It was immediately clear that this was a much more used and repaired section. The wall dipped and fell creating long climbs up and then down again. My sore muscles screamed at me for not having better prepared for the trip. The long, even, flat sections that were filled with tourists but easy to walk. Gone was our quiet connection with the wall. Soon we were back in the van giving a last wave to the wall.
Spending two days walking the wall was the highlight for each of us on this trip. We will always share the memories of the hours we spent walking, eating, and huffing and puffing together. (Well, maybe I'm the only one with huffing and puffing memories!)
Tour company we used for our two day hike. Great Wall Hiking
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