Wednesday at the Great Wall
I took Wednesday off so I could spend a bit of time with my brother, who was leaving on Friday. We headed to the Great Wall. There are 4 different sections that are pretty accessible from Beijing. The closer you get to Beijing, the more tourists there are as well as people trying to sell them things. Also, the most touristy section is completely restored, so you get to see the wall as it was long ago. Some of the further a field sections are very damaged with time. We went to the Badaling portion, which is the closest and most touristy. It’s also completely restored (and they added handrails).
We decided to go via public bus, which in itself was a bit of adventure finding it. It was not too hard. We’d thought to hire a car to begin with, but that would have been ~$100 US, or going on a canned tour through the hotel which would have been about the same, but we decided to go at it on our own on public transportation for $1 US.
We hiked to one end, which was uphill (steep) about ¾ of a mile. Hiking it was fun, but there were loads of tourists around. We kept hearing “Hello, want to buy t-shirt for your mommy hello?” Hello is a very popular word over here. When we got to the end, we saw a guardhouse that looked empty, but the second we got there, out of the hidden portions jumped several vendors, trying to sell us cheap crap. After taking some amazing shots of the crumbling wall and what we’d walked already, we moved on.
My brother and I agreed that the most amazing part of the wall isn’t its length. It’s the fact that as it snakes along, it’s built at the highest point of every hill it’s on. It was built as a defensible structure, so that makes a lot of sense. Still, we in the US are used to freeways that avoid hills, construction that takes the easy way through.
We began our trek to the other side. It was about a 4 mile hike to the other end. As we walked further and further away from the starting point, the crowds thinned out significantly, as did the vendors. Pretty soon, we were alone walking the Great Wall. The sights were incredible, it was so much fun, so beautiful. We had purchased some rice crackers to eat, as we were starving. When we finally got to the other end, we sat down and snacked. Our legs were killing us. The Great Wall is very steep in parts, a very hard climb.
Next after coming back to the base, we were surprised to see sun crested bears (bears with gold spots on their chests, I had just seen at Woodland park Zoo before leaving) in pens that people were feeding apples. We were still tired, so we bought some beers and hung out with the bears for a while.
We decided to head to the Ming tombs, which were supposedly very close according to one guidebook. We were over 30 miles from Beijing, and the tombs were probably 15 miles away from us. We bargained with a man standing around the bears, and we settled on a ride for $20.
Jess and I failed to comprehend exactly how far apart each of the tombs was. We were dropped off to the entrance to all the tombs, which was about 4 miles from the first tomb. The entrance has a pathway called “Spirit Way”, which is a beautiful walkway full of amazing statues and the like. When we got to the end of this, we had no way of getting either back to Beijing, or to the next tomb. There weren’t very many tourists here, but there were a few vendors. We bargained with a vendor to take us to the first (and most impressive) of the tombs.
Soon we were packing into the back of his van that was full of his wares, and on our way. When we got to the next attraction, we saw admission was 20 yuan each. We had a total of 80 yuan (10 US dollars) left between the two of us. We decided that if we were gonna get stuck out here, 20 some miles from Beijing, we might as well see all the sights while we were there. So we went in, checked out some pretty cool statues, realized we couldn’t even afford to put change in the offering to the dead emperor, then headed out. We found a bus back to Beijing, and managed to make it all the way back with money to spare.
We had not eaten since breakfast, and it was coming on 6 pm after a long day of hiking. While transferring from the bus to the subway, we passed a street vendor cooking up some of the yummiest smelling chicken you could believe. Faster than you could say “avian bird flu”, we had bought several items, and ate some of the spiciest, delicious, hygienically dubious food we’d ever had.
I took Wednesday off so I could spend a bit of time with my brother, who was leaving on Friday. We headed to the Great Wall. There are 4 different sections that are pretty accessible from Beijing. The closer you get to Beijing, the more tourists there are as well as people trying to sell them things. Also, the most touristy section is completely restored, so you get to see the wall as it was long ago. Some of the further a field sections are very damaged with time. We went to the Badaling portion, which is the closest and most touristy. It’s also completely restored (and they added handrails).
We decided to go via public bus, which in itself was a bit of adventure finding it. It was not too hard. We’d thought to hire a car to begin with, but that would have been ~$100 US, or going on a canned tour through the hotel which would have been about the same, but we decided to go at it on our own on public transportation for $1 US.
We hiked to one end, which was uphill (steep) about ¾ of a mile. Hiking it was fun, but there were loads of tourists around. We kept hearing “Hello, want to buy t-shirt for your mommy hello?” Hello is a very popular word over here. When we got to the end, we saw a guardhouse that looked empty, but the second we got there, out of the hidden portions jumped several vendors, trying to sell us cheap crap. After taking some amazing shots of the crumbling wall and what we’d walked already, we moved on.
My brother and I agreed that the most amazing part of the wall isn’t its length. It’s the fact that as it snakes along, it’s built at the highest point of every hill it’s on. It was built as a defensible structure, so that makes a lot of sense. Still, we in the US are used to freeways that avoid hills, construction that takes the easy way through.
We began our trek to the other side. It was about a 4 mile hike to the other end. As we walked further and further away from the starting point, the crowds thinned out significantly, as did the vendors. Pretty soon, we were alone walking the Great Wall. The sights were incredible, it was so much fun, so beautiful. We had purchased some rice crackers to eat, as we were starving. When we finally got to the other end, we sat down and snacked. Our legs were killing us. The Great Wall is very steep in parts, a very hard climb.
Next after coming back to the base, we were surprised to see sun crested bears (bears with gold spots on their chests, I had just seen at Woodland park Zoo before leaving) in pens that people were feeding apples. We were still tired, so we bought some beers and hung out with the bears for a while.
We decided to head to the Ming tombs, which were supposedly very close according to one guidebook. We were over 30 miles from Beijing, and the tombs were probably 15 miles away from us. We bargained with a man standing around the bears, and we settled on a ride for $20.
Jess and I failed to comprehend exactly how far apart each of the tombs was. We were dropped off to the entrance to all the tombs, which was about 4 miles from the first tomb. The entrance has a pathway called “Spirit Way”, which is a beautiful walkway full of amazing statues and the like. When we got to the end of this, we had no way of getting either back to Beijing, or to the next tomb. There weren’t very many tourists here, but there were a few vendors. We bargained with a vendor to take us to the first (and most impressive) of the tombs.
Soon we were packing into the back of his van that was full of his wares, and on our way. When we got to the next attraction, we saw admission was 20 yuan each. We had a total of 80 yuan (10 US dollars) left between the two of us. We decided that if we were gonna get stuck out here, 20 some miles from Beijing, we might as well see all the sights while we were there. So we went in, checked out some pretty cool statues, realized we couldn’t even afford to put change in the offering to the dead emperor, then headed out. We found a bus back to Beijing, and managed to make it all the way back with money to spare.
We had not eaten since breakfast, and it was coming on 6 pm after a long day of hiking. While transferring from the bus to the subway, we passed a street vendor cooking up some of the yummiest smelling chicken you could believe. Faster than you could say “avian bird flu”, we had bought several items, and ate some of the spiciest, delicious, hygienically dubious food we’d ever had.
posted by Kyle | 5:27 AM
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