Walking the Wall
China
The Great Wall
I have heard that train travel in China during the Chinese New Year is horrific, and only brain-dead idiots or people who couldn’t afford better means of travel would ride a train at this time of the year. Perfect. We left the luxurious accommodations of China’s great concrete jungle, Shanghai, on a sleeper bound for Beijing. After an uneventful 13 hours, we arrived in Beijing, bought some gear and then took the train to Jinshanling. The train to Jinshanling was seats only, but many people had bought “standing room only” tickets and we had to kick them out of our seats. I now see why people say travel during the Chinese New Year is very crowded. It was really difficult and a huge test of my manners to try to get a full hiking backpack through a train that a greased eel couldn’t pass through. The train only stops for two minutes at each stop, and if you didn’t get off, too bad. Many people stand in the doorway, and won’t move until you shove them aside. In China, there is a lot of cutting in line, and for good reason. The accompanying “shit or get off the pot” mentality that we have in the west just isn’t there.
The whole way from Shanghai, I kept hearing how we were going to stay at this peasant’s house. In Jinshanling some people met us at the train station and we walked down a large hill in the dark to their house. I expected a grass hut, or a teepee, but what I found was a big screen TV and a Britney Spears poster. Not exactly what I call traditional. They fed us well, and showed us to their bedroom where we were going to sleep, and we discussed our hiking plans. These peasants had experience showing people around the wall, so they advised us to wake up early and walk past they guards to avoid the entrance fee.
So we woke up at 4am and someone drove us in the back of a mianbaoche (two-stroke minivan) to the entrance. It was awesome riding in the back of a cold van, with the lights out, in the snow. We snuck past the guards, thrilled to be hiking in the dark. There is a certain art to walking quietly in packed snow. We were on the wall when the sun came up and it was great. We hiked all day and finally reached Simatai, where the guards caught us and made us pay for admission. The Lazercraze card and a little bit of Chinese got me the student rate. We reached the bridge where they wanted to charge us $0.50 to cross, so we decided to walk around, and we found some hot springs, on the alternate route. I wanted to jump in but no one else would. On the other side of the stream we reached the mass transport entry point to Simatai. Here we got many strange looks at our huge packs, and some snappy remarks. Two young ladies told us that we weren’t getting very far on the wall since there was a guard blocking the road ahead. Obviously these two didn’t know they were talking to the Toddster.
We talked to some old peasant woman selling stuff and she told us that the guard blocking the way would leave at 4pm and to hide in the woods until then. So we were hiding for 1.5 hours in the cold. At that point I was ready to crack. I was thinking about hamburgers and warm hotels, and I started to remember what I had read on BBC a few months back about how some solo British backpacker got his brains bashed out not far from here, so the locals could relieve him of a few Pounds. Was I getting set up by that old woman? Was she just telling me to wait in the woods until her thug husband and grandson could sharpen up the pick axe? I didn’t say anything and stuck it out. Then the guard left and we came out of hiding. I bought something from the old woman to pay her back for her advice, but the people I was with were too cheap to buy anything from her. Well, they didn’t have a Ming dynasty brick with their name on it. The old lady told us to watch out for the snow leopard and I was like “yeah right.”
The old woman was 60 years old but looked like she was 90! She told us she had never been to Beijing. That’s a three hour bus ride and $4. Not a stretch to see the nation’s capital, but perhaps it was for her. After some small talk we hiked up past where the guard was, and camped for the night. In the morning one of the girls said that she saw something the size of a dog walk past her tent. Once again I thought, “yeah right.”
We started hiking and one of the guys started getting scared because the wall was too dangerous, so they wanted to stop and discuss it. The wall is on a mountain top with cliffs on either side, falling off would mean death. Also there is only one part of the wall like a fence, not like the other places where you could drive a car down the wall. This is why the guard is stationed there, to prevent foolish foreigners from falling off the wall. We kept
The Great Wall at Night
going, then reached the “heaven’s ladder.” It is really dangerous and we found a marked trail on the west side of the mountain. The west side had more snow and was dark, so it was very cold. At this point I was leading the party by about 20 meters and had to stop and wait for my companions all the time. Luckily we made it to the top, and to the 18th tower or the Beijing view tower, from which you could supposedly see Beijing from but we couldn’t.
Near the top in the snow, I found some animal foot prints that were shaped like a cat’s but the size of an apple. I knew it wasn’t a dog because there were no claw marks. Then, I realized that the peasant wasn’t lying and that there was some big cat up there. It was very windy and after some discussion we walked down the east side of the mountain where it was warm. We were walking through some peasant villages, where they were growing corn on terraces, and walnuts and apples. After walking through some fields we heard a loud explosion like gun shot – I thought some farmer was shooting at us! I didn’t breathe for a minute then I saw it was an old 3-wheeled car backfiring. After that we made it to the road where a minivan took us an hour away to a medium sized town, where we caught a bus back to Beijing.
In retrospect I now see how the other three-quarters of the population lives in China, in small villages farming areas the size of a basketball court. Mark Twain said “morals are only good when you are warm and well fed.” This should be kept in mind when wondering why so many local dialects still exist in China even though the government tries to force one language or why it’s hard to teach people to respect the environment. Despite our sneaking past the guards and paying off the locals, we respected the wall. I resisted the urge to take a brick, and I never used my metal tipped hiking poles on the wall.
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