scribbler at large

In honor of Guoqingjie, China’s National Day (pronounced something like gwoh-ching-jyeah), the whole country took some time off last week, including us. We headed northeast to Chengde, a city in Hebei province, which is the next one over from us. We hired a driver to get us there, since other options were sold out—possibly the most expensive choice we could have made…better planning next time. On the way, we stopped at a portion of the Great Wall called Jinshanling, which is what I’ll tell you about here. Chengde itself needs its own post, so that will come next!

Since traffic two Saturdays ago was destined to be horrendous (it’s one of the biggest travel days of the year here), we left our apartment at 5 a.m. to get a head start. It turned out everyone else had the same idea, and traffic was rough for the first two hours of the trip. My husband and I already knew that driving in the city was a white knuckle affair, but neither of us were prepared for the number of accidents we passed—at least four in the first hour, most involving more than two cars. The great news is that they were mostly fender benders, drivers and passengers hanging out on the side of the road socializing and looking unfazed. I guess that’s one benefit of bumper-to-bumper traffic: it’s harder to hurt yourself.

Watching the accidents roll by convinced me that it was only a matter of time before we crashed, too. With nothing else to do besides grind my teeth in distress, I fell asleep (coping mechanism for all seasons) while my husband kept watch. Thankfully, after 3-4 hours of driving we got to Jinshanling unscathed and broke free of the traffic.

The Jinshanling section of the Great Wall is 80 miles outside of Beijing and was built in 1368 during the Ming Dynasty. It’s about 6.5 miles long. Contrary to what I used to believe, The Great Wall isn’t just one long, uninterrupted wall, it’s actually made up of a bunch of different sections that don’t always connect. These segments were built in different times under different leadership, all with the goal of keeping out invaders from the north. The earliest wall-construction started way back in the 7th century B.C., and new construction continued through the 17th century A.D. Since then, parts of the wall have been restored and kept up. This map is a helpful snapshot of where and when parts of the wall were built. You can see Jinshanling at the center/right of the map (one of the white dots). The other white dots are the most popular wall destinations from Beijing: Mutianyu and Badaling.

At Jinshanling, we were the first tourists of the day, and took off up the trail with a smiley tchotchke vendor waving after us saying “buy stuff on your way back!” in Mandarin. The wall runs along mountain ridges and therefore involves some climbing to get to. The trail was sometimes steep, but the path was built up with steps and bricks, so “hiking” would be a strong word to use—more like vigorous walking. The real challenge was breathing easy, since the air quality was not at its finest.

Being suddenly alone on a quiet trail in the woods after the crowded city/highway was bizarre and enjoyable. Is that silence we're hearing? We weren’t really alone, though—every few hundred feet we ran into a vendor hocking drinks (8:30 a.m. and they'd already strategically placed themselves along the trail). I also made friends with a bee of prehistoric size and supersonic buzz that was enchanted by my sweatshirt and followed me up the mountain (turns out it was an Asian Giant Hornet. Read about them if you dare).

We made it up to the wall in about 30 minutes and had our tickets checked by a friendly lady watching a movie at high volume on her phone. She and her coworker were the only two people on this section of the wall and we were free to roam without cameoing in other peoples' photos.

At first I just stumbled around saying "this is amazing," because the scenery was truly stunning. We were surrounded by short, steep mountains that had been terraced for farming at some point. We could see the road we’d come in on down below us and the wall snaking off along the ridges to either side. The air was fuzzy, which gave the whole scene a mystic, faded-photograph quality—the colors were dimmed by white haze and we couldn't see very far. Our orientation in time was further scrambled by the contrast of standing on a piece of architecture built hundreds of years ago while listening to the sounds of a movie bouncing off the mountains. This kind of juxtaposition is always on display here, but some moments are more mind-bending than others.

Looking off toward the great white yonder.

I’d seen hundreds of photos of the Great Wall of China, like you probably have, but physically standing on it and seeing it stretch out along the ridge was awesome, in the true sense of the word.

We walked through a few of the towers built at intervals along the wall—some of them were beacon posts, and others were storage towers and lodging/defense structures.

The gun holes and basic features are still there, which helped us imagine what it was like to be posted there. The construction process must have been excruciating—the kind of project my modern mind can't fathom without the injection of heavy machinery and power tools.

Further attempts at description will fall short, so I defer to the photos. Rest assured, though, they’re nothing like the real thing. All I can say is that standing on the wall was a profound experience--definitely a comforting affirmation of my own insignificance on the timeline of the world.

We walked back down the trail after a couple of hours and hopped back in the car to drive the rest of the way to Chengde. More on that soon.

For now, this: