Day 10: The Wall

In comparison to the shenanigans of yesterday’s successive disappointments, today has been a victory. In the 36 degree heat, average feats of everyday tourism become hurdles of massive proportion. Whilst normally climbing the Great Wall of China gives you right to a sloganned t-shirt and a postcard, the tour map, emblazoned with the quote: “if you don’t climb the wall, you are no hero”, has made us into legends. 

The triumph of today was that nothing went wrong. We woke up at five, had a quick Frosties breakfast and were on a subway train by six. Here, finally, we found the teenagers of Beijing: slumped against the poles and walls of the carriage, a cupful of shadow under each eye. School rush hour. From then, a quick walk to the bus station, (momentary confusion as to the location of 916快) and, after an hour and a bit of bus transit, a 15 minute taxi ride to the wall. 

The bus ride was a lottery - I sat in the local proximity of a snorer: a man with the inhale of a gurgling coffee machine, who snorted himself awake at each stop. The lack of space meant that I had to join my moist shoulder with the equally sweaty lady next to me, and we both perspired delicately in this position for the rest of the trip. E had the misfortune to have sat next to a neighbour who farted damply every ten minutes. (You’ll be pleased to hear the trip back was much better - we had the luck to sit next to each other!)

At the station of 慕田峪， fifteen minutes from the wall, we were approached by a taxi driver, who pointed out the next bus up to the Great Wall was in over an hour’s time. He cheerfully drove us up, and I chatted to him in Chinese, asking him if he had a family and whether he found his job interesting. After five minutes my vocab dried up so I resorted to GCSE topics... we discussed his hobbies and holiday trips. 

At 9:15, the wall was practically empty, and we hiked up the equivalent of forty four floors of restored stone surrounded by breathtaking views of foggy mountainous China, before collapsing in the shade of the final watchtower. Lunch (grapes crushed into pasta) was taken here, before we headed back down, driven out by the threat of the midday heat. Coincidently, another tourist had just heaved himself, retching, into the building, and we felt now was the time for a swift exit. 

A comment on the wall itself: what a feat of engineering and strength! Constructed in the 15th century, it stretched on as far as the eye could see, providing almost every mountain in sight with a spiny ridge of stone and sheer determination. It’s not a flat wall, by any stretch, and in some parts, the steps were so big and steep (huge chunks of square rock) we had to clamber up them on all fours. There were watchtowers dotted along the wall which provided several minutes of cool - just enough to catch our breath. 

Having taken the cable car up, we decided to take the toboggan down, and were each given a kart and a push down the winding track back to the shuttle busses. The luge was fabulous, a self governed slide across more than a kilometre of clacky clacky kart tracks. 

A quick and eventless journey home ended, inevitably, with a nap.