Wednesday, August 11th: Great Wall Day!!!

Susanne:

There is a saying in China “He who does not reach the Great Wall is not a true man”. Hmmm.....

Well, regardless, it has been on my bucket list and here we were: we signed on for a tour run through the hostel here in Beijing and did so with our new Danish friend Liz (Lisabeth). The section which is usually the one recommended by many which is from Simatai to Jinshanling....was actually closed and under construction so that we had to choose another section of the wall called Mutianyu.

The wall was described to us as being over 5000km long, and if it were only about a meter in height, it would reach all the way around the planet. Well, my math isn’t strong enough to prove or disprove this...just passing on facts :) The first people started working on it in the century BC.

The part we were about to visit had a great plus: it came with a ski lift kind of part to go up to start it (it is up in the hills) but also had a toboggan part to come down in. We did not quite understand until we took the lift up and looked below: it was like a cool luge sort of track out of metal and they put the toboggans on the back of the lifts to go up.

We arrived at watchtower 6 and would have time to climb to tower 20 on this part of the wall and could then come back down to 6 to take the cool toboggan down. The towers divide the wall into sections from about 200 maybe 400 meters and the wall changes direction, some parts are straight and some bend which gives the wall the snaking look.

It was absolutely awesome to be standing on the wall. I am not sure what I expected, I certainly heard of the restoration etc but it was in really good shape. Again, we were looking at stairs and steps to make our way up. What a neat experience. We decided to climb steadily up and see how we did for time before taking our time to come down and to take pics etc. We were the first ones of the group to go that way and once we were past tower 14 which allowed another way to get down via cable car, it got more and more quiet so that we could actually grab some pics on our own. It was a foggy day, and we were not able to get km’s of view of the wall snaking its way through the hills, but it was enough. We were excited to be there. Liz had been to China before and it was not her first climb but the four of us still had a lot of fun, took lots of pics, drank litres of water (we were drenched again from the climb even though it was only 27 degrees today). There are vendors every watchtower or so selling cold water and cold beer (huh!). The section we climbed was about 1.7 km long, so we certainly can’t say that we “know” the wall :)

Then we got in line for the toboggan ride down. It was on hold as it had drizzled a little bit and they took a few sleds down with blankets in front of them to dry the tracks off. It said to not use a camera and hold on to the brake (between your legs when sitting down) with both hands, but I wanted to take a video and took a 4 1/2 minute video all the way down. It was awesome!!! We got some good speed and could lean into the corners...felt like a real track even though it likely should have been covered with snow or ice. Our sled had wheels and after a few slowdowns caused by people in front of us who were too cautious and actually used their brakes almost causing a few collisions as we pretty well rear ended one another, we arrived at the bottom laughing and pretty proud of ourselves.

What a great day. At the bottom, the sky suddenly got dark and we got soaked on our way to a restaurant before getting into our bus for the hour or so ride home as the wall is actually about 70 kms outside of Beijing. What a high!!!

We got showered and are now sitting downstairs in our ‘entertainment/restaurant’ at the hostel which is super social. The room which is always dim afternoons and later and serves beer as well as coffee and food. Has a nice TV screen where we are watching an old Michael Jackson Movie right now and has a wifi connection. We are waiting for our 8:30 pm free BBQ....the second free dinner the hostel put on this week.The rooms are small here but the entertainment and atmosphere is great.

One more day tomorrow seeing the temple of heaven and maybe a market and then we leave Friday. It will be quite a culture shock to have to go back to responsibilities after these amazing 5 weeks....