Scaling the Great Wall
Trip Start
May 03, 2011
1
95
129
Trip End
May 10, 2012
Where I stayed
Beijing, China
Friday, January 13, 2012
Few cities in the world have served as long as the political and cultural centre of an area as immense. Beijing is one of the Four Great Ancient Capitals of China. It has been the heart of China's history for centuries, and there is scarcely a major building of any age in Beijing that does not have at least some national historical significance. The city is renowned for its opulent palaces, temples, and huge stone walls and gates.
The Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire against intrusions by various nomadic groups. Several walls have been built since the 5th century BC that are referred to collectively as the Great Wall, which has been rebuilt and maintained from the 5th century BC through the 16th century. The Great Wall stretches from Shanhaiguan in the east, to Lop Lake in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. The most comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that all the walls measure 8,851.8 km (5,500.3 mi). This is made up of 6,259.6 km (3,889.5 mi) sections of actual wall, 359.7 km (223.5 mi) of trenches and 2,232.5 km (1,387.2 mi) of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.
We took another fast train from Nanjing to Beijing and reached speeds of 310 kph and we arrived in Beijing is just over 4 hours. A quick hop on the metro and we arrived as happy campers in the Happy Dragon Hostel. We arrived in Beijing on Friday 13th and we hadn’t realized the significance of this until we started to plan our onward journey. Upon arrival in a city we always plan what we are doing next so that we can get accommodation and onward travel booked. The travel part is where we hit a snag. Due to the Chinese Spring Festival (not sure why they have a spring festival in Winter) and the Chinese New Year we could not get seats on any trains out of Beijing. The only trains available were slow trains with standing room and as our journeys would be between 20 to 40 hours, this was not an option. The train situation was like this for at least a week. As we didn´t want to stay in Beijing for over a week, poor Rob had to work like a dog and make an alternative plan. Luckily we were able to get some flights booked from Beijing to Xian and then from Xian onto Chengdu. This was a feat in itself as there is a real lack of helpful travel information in China and all of the travel sites are in Mandarin. There is no real alternative to the train services but we are just hoping that after Chengdu we can slowly make our way through to Laos.
Beijing is a great city and very different to the other places we have visited so far in China. It has a much more cultural feel than Shanghai and is so vast in the size of the city. When travelling on the metro you can really feel the huge numbers of people in the city though as the tube trains are jam packed. After spending most of our first afternoon planning we started our sightseeing proper on day two. We visited Tiananmen Square which is the third largest city square in the world and it is absolutely massive. It is surrounded to by impressive buildings like the National Museum, People´s Monument, Great Hall of the People, Tian`n Gate and various Government buildings. It is also home to the Forbidden City and Imperial Palace. It is incredible to enter the Forbidden City and see the many palace buildings stretching out what feels like miles. Closing your eyes you can imagine how this city would have looked and thrived hundreds of years ago when it was inhabited as part of the Chinese kingdom. We spent a good few hours at Tiananmen Square and then went to Temple of Heaven and the surrounding park and again gazed in wonder at the majestic buildings.
We were up early on day three as we spent the day at the Great Wall of China. The Wall stretches for over 8,000 kms in total. The area of the wall within Beijing region is about 300 km´s. We were super excited to get our first sighting of the wall from the cable car as we approached. Stepping out onto the wall and seeing it stretch out for miles and miles in each direction was totally awesome. All along the wall are gatehouses where sentries would have been posted years ago and we firstly headed to gatehouse 1. There were " no admission" signs after this point but being the rebels we are we wanted to see what was beyond this point so we went off the beaten track and got to see the area of the wall that is not maintained for tourists. You can see the wall continuing in the distance but much of it is broken down and not suitable for walking on. We hiked back along the wall in the other direction where tourists are allowed to go for many km´s but we had to turn back in the end as we had to meet our tour group back at the restaurant for lunch. Seeing the Great Wall has been one of my absolute highlights of our world trip and it is something that I will never forget. We tobogganed back down the mountain side which would have been great fun except for the fact that we couldn´t really get any speed going as a group of Chinese girls on toboggans in front of us kept on slowing down to take stupid pictures of each other grrrrrr!!!!
Despite a shaky start in Beijing caused by our Friday 13th planning blip, we have totally loved Beijing and this place gives a real flavor of China and an insight into Chinese traditional and modern culture. It has made us far more aware of how history has shaped the modern Chinese nation and Beijing scores a reputable 8 ½ / 10.
