A really big wall
The chaos of this city is amazingly functional. Every single person seems as if they are about to fall off their bike or smash it into something, every bus is about to run over a dozen pedestrians who are not only crossing the street in busy traffic but walking directly into it or amidst it. Cars hardly ever signal a lane change and never patiently ride behind someone on the highway, and lanes are basically an imaginary suggestion, hardly a neccesity. Passing somebody through oncoming traffic is the norm, hills and blind curves be damned. I am still learning to just stop looking out the front window of the car, it never does me any good. I was walking down the sidewalk a few nights ago avoiding pedestrians and bicycles and a car pulled up onto the sidewalk and began heading directly towards me. No one except me is ever remotely perturbed by this behavior and in fact usually doesn't seem to notice it. People move just enough to avoid disaster. Buses cut off other vehicles across 3 lanes of traffic and people drive one inch away from hitting them until the bus just moves and the person squeezes by. It's hard to describe though I'd say the lack of fear is simultaneously concerning and inspiring.
So the chaos of Beijing proper aside, I escaped a few days ago and visited the Great Wall of China. I was pretty excited for this as it is one of the few wonder-of-the-world scale attractions I have ever visited and certainly one in a class of its own. There are many sections one can visit from Beijing. The most famous and frequently visited is called Badaling. From what I have heard it is the most heavily reconstructed and renovated section and very little of the original wall remains. Furthermore it is the closest to Beijing and so many tourists choose this since it is easy to get to and transportation tends to be easy enough to arrange. I've heard that there is an astonishingly wide array of tourist services, restaurants, guest houses, t-shirt vendors all over the wall, a starbucks, a cable car so you don't have to walk, etc. I'm sure you can all guess that I did not want to go there. So what did I do?
I left the hostel around 8am or so and took a cab to the long distance bus station in Beijing called Dongzhimen. I met my friend Annie there and we took the 980 bus about 2 hours or so to a city called Miyun, somewhere north of Beijing. We almost made it to the Miyun bus station and the guy told us to get off, so that his friend who was a taxi driver could scam us into a ride to the wall. We declined which did not stop the guy from following us around for 20 minutes. We got onto the next 980 bus shortly thereafter and went the extra 15-20 minutes to the Miyun bus station where we were originally supposed to get off, and from where it turns out that there is no local bus that takes you to the wall so we were left to bargain with these taxi and van drivers to take us the rest of the way. After much haggling they shoved us into a bus with 3 other foreigners trying to do the same thing and we were off. An hour later we made it to the wall. I should add that the hostel I'm staying at does have a round-trip service for 150rmb which will take you to this part of the wall, but we felt (correctly) that this would be way more adventurous and fun.
So we went to the section of the wall called Jinshanling, one of the older and less reconstructed sections that still somehow manages to have a cable car which we felt would definitely be cheating. We hiked up the hill to the actual wall and got our first view of it snaking off into the distance and out of view. The part of the wall near to the drop-off is fairly reconstructed but still quite impressive. Here's where it gets good. We made a left and hiked along the wall for the next 4 hours all the way to the nearest neighboring section called Simatai. The first part was hard. It was probably something like 90 degrees and the sky was clear and blue. Out there the air isn't bad and in every direction off the wall all you can see are green trees and mountains. So the scenery is definitely nice, but then come the stairs. So many stairs. And not like the stairs at home or in the subway station. Sometimes they are little stairs. Sometimes they are really big stairs. Sometimes they are crumbly stairs. Sometimes they used to be stairs but are now big piles of crumbly rocks and dirt with the occasional skittish lizard. But they are relentless. The stairs, not the lizards. So we walked up quite a ways along ancient sections of wall from tower to tower. The further we got, the older things got and thankfully an hour or two in things got a bit easier and the uphills started to be balanced with downhills. I took pictures which I will post after I leave Beijing which will hopefully do the experience more justice than I can with my words, but it was absolutely wonderful. There were many times where we were virtually alone on the wall. It's incredibly quiet, all you can hear is the sound of your footsteps and occasionally of a local you will run into who wants to sell you water at a price that is hard to bargain since they know if you don't buy it you will probably die. They have have the courtesy to freeze the water in advance and let me tell you after hiking all that way, that water tastes mighty good. The inflated price is still under $1USD so it's kinda hard to complain and they told us they didn't have much farmwork to do right now so it seems as if they clearly need the money more than we did.
So the hike took us about 4-5 hours total and was everything I wanted from my Great Wall experience. If anyone is thinking of going that I know, I'd highly recommend the hike or at least visiting a section that is not Badaling to get a bit more of a personal experience without being harassed by vendors the entire time and to see some of the older Ming era sections.
My legs were really sore yesterday and I didn't do much except arrange a few future airline tickets and get them in hand and go out for a few short walks. I mostly hung out with people from the hostel including one visit to a restaurant for dinner. I'm staying one more night in Beijing and will be off to Phnom Penh, Cambodia by plane tomorrow afternoon. A new stamp for my passport!
So the chaos of Beijing proper aside, I escaped a few days ago and visited the Great Wall of China. I was pretty excited for this as it is one of the few wonder-of-the-world scale attractions I have ever visited and certainly one in a class of its own. There are many sections one can visit from Beijing. The most famous and frequently visited is called Badaling. From what I have heard it is the most heavily reconstructed and renovated section and very little of the original wall remains. Furthermore it is the closest to Beijing and so many tourists choose this since it is easy to get to and transportation tends to be easy enough to arrange. I've heard that there is an astonishingly wide array of tourist services, restaurants, guest houses, t-shirt vendors all over the wall, a starbucks, a cable car so you don't have to walk, etc. I'm sure you can all guess that I did not want to go there. So what did I do?
I left the hostel around 8am or so and took a cab to the long distance bus station in Beijing called Dongzhimen. I met my friend Annie there and we took the 980 bus about 2 hours or so to a city called Miyun, somewhere north of Beijing. We almost made it to the Miyun bus station and the guy told us to get off, so that his friend who was a taxi driver could scam us into a ride to the wall. We declined which did not stop the guy from following us around for 20 minutes. We got onto the next 980 bus shortly thereafter and went the extra 15-20 minutes to the Miyun bus station where we were originally supposed to get off, and from where it turns out that there is no local bus that takes you to the wall so we were left to bargain with these taxi and van drivers to take us the rest of the way. After much haggling they shoved us into a bus with 3 other foreigners trying to do the same thing and we were off. An hour later we made it to the wall. I should add that the hostel I'm staying at does have a round-trip service for 150rmb which will take you to this part of the wall, but we felt (correctly) that this would be way more adventurous and fun.
So we went to the section of the wall called Jinshanling, one of the older and less reconstructed sections that still somehow manages to have a cable car which we felt would definitely be cheating. We hiked up the hill to the actual wall and got our first view of it snaking off into the distance and out of view. The part of the wall near to the drop-off is fairly reconstructed but still quite impressive. Here's where it gets good. We made a left and hiked along the wall for the next 4 hours all the way to the nearest neighboring section called Simatai. The first part was hard. It was probably something like 90 degrees and the sky was clear and blue. Out there the air isn't bad and in every direction off the wall all you can see are green trees and mountains. So the scenery is definitely nice, but then come the stairs. So many stairs. And not like the stairs at home or in the subway station. Sometimes they are little stairs. Sometimes they are really big stairs. Sometimes they are crumbly stairs. Sometimes they used to be stairs but are now big piles of crumbly rocks and dirt with the occasional skittish lizard. But they are relentless. The stairs, not the lizards. So we walked up quite a ways along ancient sections of wall from tower to tower. The further we got, the older things got and thankfully an hour or two in things got a bit easier and the uphills started to be balanced with downhills. I took pictures which I will post after I leave Beijing which will hopefully do the experience more justice than I can with my words, but it was absolutely wonderful. There were many times where we were virtually alone on the wall. It's incredibly quiet, all you can hear is the sound of your footsteps and occasionally of a local you will run into who wants to sell you water at a price that is hard to bargain since they know if you don't buy it you will probably die. They have have the courtesy to freeze the water in advance and let me tell you after hiking all that way, that water tastes mighty good. The inflated price is still under $1USD so it's kinda hard to complain and they told us they didn't have much farmwork to do right now so it seems as if they clearly need the money more than we did.
So the hike took us about 4-5 hours total and was everything I wanted from my Great Wall experience. If anyone is thinking of going that I know, I'd highly recommend the hike or at least visiting a section that is not Badaling to get a bit more of a personal experience without being harassed by vendors the entire time and to see some of the older Ming era sections.
My legs were really sore yesterday and I didn't do much except arrange a few future airline tickets and get them in hand and go out for a few short walks. I mostly hung out with people from the hostel including one visit to a restaurant for dinner. I'm staying one more night in Beijing and will be off to Phnom Penh, Cambodia by plane tomorrow afternoon. A new stamp for my passport!
posted by Dan at 4:40 PM
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