In the minds of travelers, there are travel fantasies and eventually, travel realities. The fantasy may be simple. You want to relax on a deserted tropical beach. However, in reality, your personal space on that beach will be about the size of your towel.
I thought it would be wonderful to walk on a section of one of the world's wonders. As Jan and I planned this trip, I grew more and more excited about the days we would be spending "on the wall." I pictured the wall to be something like the yellow brick road, from The Wizard of Oz. A relatively level journey from wherever you are, to the Emerald City.
The Great Wall extends over 4,500 miles, construction started on the wall around 200 B.C., however most of the wall dates from 400-600 years ago. There has been some debate as to if it can be seen from space or not. So far, the only astronaut who could see it has been Chinese.
After over 18-hours of flight time, we arrived in Beijing on the night of our 15th wedding anniversary. After arriving at the hotel, we tried to stay awake long enough to have a nice anniversary dinner. As the waitress handed us our menus, I politely replied "gracias" as Jan began to order in Spanish. We looked at each other and smiled. Chinese people do not speak Spanish. Thanks to living in Mexico, we both thought, "we are in a foreign place and when in a foreign place we speak Spanish."
The next morning, we were driven three hours to a remote section of the Great Wall, at Simatai. We would hike from Simatai to the neighboring village of Jinshanling, where the driver and guide would meet us the following morning.
As we approached Simatai, we caught short glimpses of the wall in the distance. Both of us were very excited. We had arranged to spend the night in a watchtower at Jinshanling, after what we assumed would be a five-hour hike.
The Great Wall is incredible. Incredibly high up and incredibly hard to get to. Luckily for us, there was a cable car to take us most of the way up. We continued up the mountain, towards the wall. After a few sets of stairs, both of us were out of breath. I spotted a "mini-train" that promised to take us further up the moutain. At $1.20, we considered it a bargain.
After the train, there were stairs, and more stairs, and we weren’t yet on the stupid wall. While we rested, our guide asked locals, "which way to Jinshanling?" We had 50/50 odds and did not want to head off in the wrong direction.
At the precise moment my foot landed on China's Great Wall, it began to rain. We were tired and now wet...and our adventure still hadn't begun. Jan dug the raincoats out of her backpack as I put my camera gear into plastic bags.
Lee, our guide, was eager to leave. He told us that he would see us tomorrow in Jinshanling. As he left, he said it was very hard to get lost on the Great Wall, as long as we never leave it. Then he dissappeared down the steps.
Jan & I had no choice. Our transportation was gone. No one knew where we were. The guidebooks put the hike at about five hours, if you were in shape...which we weren't. The cruel fact was, we had no choice, we were going to Jinshanling and we were going alone.
Then, I heard a voice, "buy my book?" then another, "you buy postcard." We were not alone. Two vendors from a local village stood smiling in the morning rain. "No thank you," we replied in unison.
"You go to Jinshanling? Jinshanling very far, we go with you." Suddenly, Jan and I had our Oz-esque scarecrow and tin man. They repeatedly offered to carry our bags while helping us up hundreds, if not thousands of steps.
Hiking the Great Wall is not a walk in the park. It was built and rebuilt over thousands of years not to attract tourists, but to connect the highest peaks along the spine of China's mountain ranges as a mode of defense. This wall was designed to keep out the Mongol Empire.
In the end, the wall didn't work. Genghis Khan and the Mongols went around and over the wall to conquer China. His grandson, Kublai Khan later became the Chinese emperor and founder of China's Yuan dynasty.
As we walked, the rain stopped and the temperature began to rise. The wall is designed so that the Chinese army could travel through each guard tower, and as we walked through each ruined structure, the ladies would say, "this is tower number two, Jinshanling tower is number 34." Motivational speakers, they were not.
The section of the wall we traversed is remote enough to keep tourist traffic to a minimum. On this overcast day, Jan and I were the only tourists in sight. This meant we were likely to be the only sales opportunity for the day, in the minds of the vendors.
As we passed another ruined watchtower, I think it was number eight, an old man held up bottles of water that were still partially frozen. "Water? You buy water?" He didn't blink when I showed him our 1.5 liter bottle. "OK, I walk with you. Maybe later buy water."
We now had five people walking along with us, waiting for us to develop a need to purchase something. Our entire group stopped every time Jan and I caught our breath or I when took photos. At one of these stops, we saw just how steep our journey was about to become. We had already spent nearly three hours on this Chinese stair-master and were dreading the five or six-hundred steps that lay ahead of us up to the next peak.
"I know short cut," came a tiny voice over my shoulder. I looked at Jan, who would have been smiling if she wasn't so tired.
"Never leave the wall," Lee's words echoed in my head as we followed these two tiny Chinese ladies down a path, away from the great fortress. Jan and I hadn't really discussed what could happen to us if we left the wall, before agreeing to follow them. We were exhausted and would have walked through Hades if it meant avoiding the mountain in front of us.
The lack of stairs on the trail was immediately refreshing. Our calves thanked us as we walked through two primitive little villages. Most likely, life here hadn't changed much since this section of the Great Wall was built over 600 years ago.
The ladies seemed to know where we were going and were willing to slow their pace to allow us to keep up with them. After all, we were THE customers of the day.
From time to time, Jan and I would catch a glimpse of the wall. By taking the shortcut we had avoided not just one mountain pass but a series of severe up and down peaks. I could almost hear my tired legs thanking me.
I did, however, start to wonder just where were we going? I mean, this walk in the valley was nice, but every time I saw the Great Wall, it was further away. It was becoming difficult to make out the tiny guard houses that dotted every peak.
My fears were laid to rest as we climbed out of a forested valley to see a curve of the wall bending towards us. The Great Wall is anything but straight. Soon the four of us were climbing a pile of brick that had been a section of the wall, to once again stand on one of the world's wonders.
We were now at guardhouse 25, less than 10 guardhouses to Jinshanling! Our spirits were dampened when our two faithful guides told us they had to return to Simatai. Of course, we bought their postcards and a book. We didn't negotiate prices and were later told that I had overpaid by nearly $5 for the book. I didn't care what the book cost. We were happy to have avoided what would have been a painful section of the wall to traverse. However, once again, Jan & I were alone on the Great Wall.
One thing to keep in mind about traveling in a country of 2 billion people...you are never alone. It wasn't long before two other women approached us to "buy book, buy postcard." This time we said "no thank you" and meant it.
We stopped to admire the sheer magnificence of the Great Wall. From our vantage point, it snaked from mountain peaks through valleys to peaks, in both directions, for as far as the eye could see. This was a very special moment. We savored it, but our legs told us that we had to move on.
Without guides, Jan and I lost track of each tower’s number. No point to it, I thought. We can't get lost. The only way off this steep portion of the wall would have been with a parachute.
"Hellooo Feeleepak, Helloooo!" Some man was shouting to us from a tower in the distance. This was our first glimpse of Sun Hai Long, the man who held the lease on the watchtower, our accommodations for the night.
Sun Hai Long and his brother have permits to operate small stores in two watchtowers outside of Jinshanling. They even ran electric wires up from the village to power a light bulb and cooler in each tower.
Upon arriving, we met Debbie, an American who was spending her second night in the guardhouse atop one of the towers. From the deck around her accommodations, Sun Hai Long pointed to the next tower, "you sleep there," he spoke in passable English.
The Great Wall is astounding during the day, but at sunset, the view is even more spectacular. I took hundreds of photos as the familiar red globe of the sun sank behind the very foreign landscape.
As the sun set, the dusk air was filled with a sound...I can only describe it as the sound of coo-coo clocks. There is a type of bird in China that make a "coo coo" sound. We learned these cuckoos, coo coo throughout the entire night.
Once the sun was gone, we prodded our now leaden legs to take us down to the village for dinner. Sun Hai Long handed each of us a flashlight, "Made in China" I would expect nothing less.
To Sun Hai Long, you are not a "customer." To him, you are a member of his family. We enjoyed dinner at his home, which is also his store, with his wife and 4-year-old daughter running around, too excited to eat.
This was the most authentic Chinese food possible. We ate what I would describe as a crust less quiche, rice, of course, stir fried vegetables, a chicken dish and what we later learned was the green tops of garlic plants, sautéed with mushrooms and tiny slivers of pork. After dinner, we used the eastern-style bathroom of the closed restaurant across the street, then headed up the mountain to our "hotel." (By eastern-style, I mean a hole in the floor that you squat over.)
Sitting still during dinner caused our legs to stiffen. We clearly had not been in proper physical shape for this experience! We climbed the stairs up the mountain at a snail's pace...maybe slower.
We arrived at our tower first, saying "goodnight" to Debbie as Sun Hai Long guided us up the narrow and very steep stairway to the guardhouse at the top of our tower. The stairs were nothing more than a stone ladder with steps wide enough for just the toe of your shoe.
Sun Hai Long took the padlock off the guardhouse door and turned on the light. We had electricity at least, but no plumbing. Within minutes, Sun Hai Long had our sleeping bags and pillows ready. I passed the time by walking around our little guard tower, the way countless Chinese guards must have, hundreds of years ago.
The silence was broken by Debbie yelling to me from below in a hushed tone, that there were people in her tower. Yes, once again, even in a remote region of China, we were not alone. Sun Hai Long told her that this section of the wall was popular with backpackers who knew that it was unguarded and therefore a cheap night's accommodation, as he walked her to her tower. Sun Hai Long spent the night outside of her guardhouse, in a tent, to help her feel more comfortable each night.
Thanks to Sun Hai Long's generosity with Chinese beer, I woke in the middle of the night. From our tower, I could see the thread of the Great Wall going off into the distance. Flashlights flickered in several towers. The backpackers certainly knew a good place to sleep for free, when they found one, I thought, as I searched along the parapet for a place to answer nature's call.
With great effort, I dragged myself up to stand in one of the notches at the top of the wall that surrounded our guard tower. I thought it only appropriate to relieve myself on the Mongolian side of the wall. The night was dark, the updraft was bracing. My flashlight failed to illuminate anything below me. I estimated that the tops of the trees I could barely make out in the night, were over 100 feet below me.
At that inopportune moment, I heard people in the tower below us. We were being invaded! I didn't want to be surprised in this position, so I zipped up and extended a leg towards the floor. Just inches before my toe reached the pavement, a brick from the wall came loose in my hand, causing me to fall flat on my butt. Here I was, brick in hand, thinking, "I have broken the Great Wall of China, I am going to jail!
As I lay on my back, holding my accidentally aquired portion of the world's largest historical site, through the wall of the guardhouse came a familiar voice, "Steve what the hell are you doing out there?" "Nothing, just looking at the stars," I instinctively responded.
The "invaders" turned out to be the local police department shaking down backpackers for their $3 admission fee. Nonetheless, I braced the door to our guardhouse “hotel” room with a chair when I returned from my little adventure.
Exhausted, the night passed quickly. We had been asleep for about four hours when Sun Hai Long came knocking on our door, yelling "the sun, the sun is coming!" Our sleeping bags had been a little warmer than what we really needed. Each sleeping bag came with a small inflatable pillow. Something that would have been more appropriate on the beach, if you needed a pillow at the beach I mean. I woke up to find a "happy starfish" cartoon character pillow stuck to the side of my face. Never underestimate the adhesive property of drool, I thought as I struggled to get dressed.
I opened the door and stepped out into the eerie pre-dawn light. Looking down from our tower, (I had put the brick back during the night) I saw just how far down I would have gone if the brick had let loose a little earlier. It was two-hundred feet, maybe more, straight down. I made a promise to myself, never to die with my pants undone.
Tents and sleeping bags dotted the Great Wall as I dragged my overworked legs from one tower to the next, to catch the sunrise. Another day in China and another photo opportunity.
Jan, the ever perfect wife, brought me a cup of instant cappuccino a short while later. This was the perfect start to a new day in China. We joined Debbie for a cup of instant spicy noodles for breakfast, then wandered down to the village to wait for our transportation back to Beijing. As we waited, we saw how accepted we were in this remote village. People smiled and waved. They even approached my camera. We had become a part of Sun Hai Long's family.
Jan & Steve
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