Along the Great Wall

First View of Great Wall from the Train

I must have been watching the Great Wall slip past for some time before Anya pointed out what I was seeing. From the train you get little impression of its size, only its great length.

The rest of what rolling past was at least as interesting to me: a great kaleidoscope of terraced rice paddies, factories spewing smoke, men with work bicycles or poles hauling things here and there, and countryside ranging from desert to field to mountain to river.

We reached Beijing in the early afternoon and set off to find the guest house that had been recommended by someone we met at the Golden Gobi. The place, when we found it, turned out to be as pleasant as we had been told, and fortunately the girls working there were just as nice and helpful, too. It was a good thing, because even before we found the guesthouse I had mishap that cast a bit of a pall over my first days in Beijing: I went to get yuan out of an ATM- and it ate my card. I had to wait until US business hours to call my bank- which told me that there was nothing they could do except send a replacement card to my US address. “But I’m in BEIJING!” I said. Yes, they understood that, but there was nothing they could do… Security policies… Fortunately it turned out that the Chinese were not so hidebound. With a great deal of help from the girls at the guesthouse– and some time spent on hold on the emergency line at the ATM, a small contingent from the bank showed up Monday morning and, after checking my passport, simply GAVE me back my card!

Waiting on Hold at the Bank

The first few days were spent walking around the neighborhood, which included Tienanmen Square marveling at the pollution. We talked to several people, however, who assured us that this was not normal.

Tiannanmen on a bad day...

...and on a good one...

High on the list, of course, were the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. We had had dinner with a friend of Lin’s at an excellent restaurant and our waiter had recommended a guide for the Great Wall tour. Since our hotel wasn’t sure there would be enough people for us to take their tour on the day we wanted to go we decided to give him a try. Then we went to buy our tickets to Shanghai. At the railway station we met the girls from our hotel, out to meet the train from Mongolia. We were headed back to the metro with our tickets when we saw them again– this time with our friend Kate in tow! As she had done in Mongolia, she not only decided to join our tour but rounded up a fourth person, Neil, to go with us.

After spending some time in Beijing, which underwent massive infrastructure improvements for the Olympics, it was interesting to get into the countryside to see how things look there. In fact, although obviously not so well-off as the capital, the evidence of the country’s growth are everywhere, and even in the poorest areas you find major building projects and signs of modernization. On the way to the Wall, for instance, I was struck by rows of brand new street lamps, all powered by solar panels.

On the Great Wall

The Wall itself is more impressive than I can find words to express. We reached the top by quick ski-lift ride. Standing on it and seeing the Escher-like cascades of stairs up and down the length of it and seeing it stretch up and along the mountain ridges was simply awe-inspiring.

View from one of the guard towers, Great Wall

The others set off at a rapid pace, while I followed more slowly, trying to imagine the building process- and the times and people that created it. The section of the wall we were walking was one of the restored sections– great lengths of the Wall are in disrepair and some have fallen into complete ruin. Even on the sections in good shape it is hard to imagine how soldiers– and horses– could ever have patrolled such a thing- even supposing the guard towers were once equipped to provide housing for men and mounts. Snaking as it does up the mountains and along the ridges there are few level stretches and many steep staircases.

Stairs on the Great Wall

Our tour ended with a toboggan ride down the mountain-side– less scary than it sounds, since our toboggans were well equipped with brakes and we could slide down so slowly as to require the signs we saw several times on the route: No parking.