China: Day 7

China Day 7: Beijing

I left early this morning to meet two EMBAs (who I met on the bullet train yesterday) to see the Great Wall. We negotiated a taxi driver for the entire day at ¥750 (~120) and drove out to the Mutianyu section of the wall.

You can take a cable car to the top of the wall, but we chose the stairs. Perhaps a rookie error as it took 20 minutes at a brisk pace just to get on the wall, but we took a toboggan on the way down the stairs which was fun.

The Wall! :

 

 

The scale of the wall is unbelievable – we covered a fair amount of ground in 4 hours, but nothing in comparison to the wall’s original 5,500 miles. The hill is also a rigorous walk; it is by no means flat, but a constant up/down as the wall crests over the area’s many hilltops. At some point the walk was so steep we were nearly crawling vertically on hands and knees.

While Mutianyu is considerably further out than the closer Badaling, the 90-minute drive was worth it for the decreased crowds. There were still a number of people in the main section of the wall, but the 2 guys and I went on a fairly serious hike and walked the wall for a bit over 4 hours. We got past the main tourist area into less restored sections that were quiet and peaceful – with slightly eerie memories of the soldiers who manned the wall posts many years before us. A less restored section of the wall:

We hiked the wall from 11am-3pm, and on the way back to Beijing stopped at the Summer Palace, built during the Jin dynasty as an escape from the city’s summer heat for emporer Wányán Liâng. By the time we reached the city around 7pm, we eeked out enough energy for dinner before calling it a day. Exhausting, but the Wall has been by far my favorite moment of the trip so far!