The Great Wall

No trip to Beijing would be complete without a visit to the Great Wall, the imposing structure that I had always been told was the only man-made structure that could be seen from space (although it cannot.) So, as dutiful tourists, Saeeda and I booked a tour through our hotel and early this morning were greeted by our tour guide, Michael (he didn’t tell us his Chinese name). I took a liking to Michael immediately, who was in his mid-twenties, and made a genuine effort to educate us throughout the tour (although he did say that the Great Wall could be seen from outer space).

The problem with pre-arranged tours in China is that they take you all to several secondary sites, before taking you to the main attraction. In our case, this entailed visiting the tomb of a Ming emperor, followed by a visit to a “Jade factory,” where we were shown how jade is mined and fashioned into jewelry. This factory, however, was actually a government owned souvenir store, as witnessed by the cavernous aisles of jade souvenirs present once you moved past the tiny “jade mining and fashioning exhibit.” One thing that struck me was that it was freezing inside, and there was no heating whatsoever. Us tourists were all bundled up in our warmest jackets and scarves, while the people working at the store were going about their business in normal clothes. I thought that living in Chicago had inured me to the cold, but obviously it had not.

Following the factory came an organized lunch, where the food was tourist friendly but still excellent (much better than any that I’ve had in the US), after which we finally made it to the Great Wall. Incidentally, the wall is not one piece, but multiple sections that the Chinese government continues to restore. The most popular of these sections is Badaling, which we avoided. Instead, Michael took us to a recently restored portion of the wall called Juyongguan, where we were in relative solitude. I had never understood what people meant when they said that they had “climbed” the Great Wall, but looking up as we stood at our drop-off point the meaning of that statement was obvious. The Great Wall was, and remains, a living structure that traverses mountains and valleys in its attempt to keep out the barbarians. Walking the wall inherently means you are climbing the mountain beneath the wall.

The views were spectacular, and given the low season (plus the cold), we climbed in relative solitude. The further we went the more people that fell away, until at the top we ran into only one other family – from Michigan, of course. Still, just as with the Forbidden City, it was hard not to be flabbergasted with the sheer audacity of the emperors that had ordered the building of this wall. The might that this structure conveys as you stand on its many watchtowers and look over the same countryside that sentries patrolled thousands of years ago is hard to ignore. It is with good reason that the Wall adorns everything in China, although I find it quite ironic that it is also the picture embossed in the visa stamp in our passports. For something designed to keep people out, it is interesting that it is now being used to lure people in.

We also saw some interesting signage. This one was on a huge banner draped across a watch tower commanding people to not smoke while climbing the wall. Because it's fine to do so otherwise. Just not when you are doing something strenuous.The climb, and subsequent descent, were tiring, so the van ride back home took place in silence, with occasional questions to Michael about good places to eat and shop over the next few days. So tired were we that once we arrived at our hotel, we fell asleep and did not awake till 11pm, at which point we decided to order room service and call it a day.