Great Wall of Pain

The following morning, I woke up early for a breakfast of pastries and cappuccino (yes, I went to a semi-western-style café) and we made an early-morning bus trip to Jinshanling. The purpose of this trip was to visit the Great Wall of China and the Jinshanling portion of the wall, though a little further away, is less crowded. The bus trip took about three hours and we got to our destination.

The views in this area were breathtaking. As I’ve mentioned earlier, Beijing typically contains a lot of smog, but the skies in this part of China were blue and, fortunately, cloudless.

We took a short path that led us up to the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall. Since this portion of the Wall is entirely on hills, we had to climb what seemed to be an uncountable number of steps to get up onto the wall. I thought this would be the rough section of the trip. I was sadly disappointed.

Once on the Wall, we walked for about six kilometers, stopping midway for lunch. Walking the wall consisted primarily of walking from watchtower to watchtower. The views were phenomenal and it was clear why this is such a great tourist attraction. It was also clear why it would be so difficult to (a) build and (b) attack. The walk from watchtower to watchtower was different each time, but some of the mini-trips were quite difficult. Especially for the out-of-shape fat tub of goo that I am. (See earlier post.)

Early on in the trip, I hired a Sherpa to take me to the top of the watchtowers. Okay, not really, but there was a little local woman who makes money by helping fat-tub-of-goo tourists like myself up the steeper climbs – and God knows I needed it. The deal was that at the end of the trip, I would buy some souvenirs from her, so I couldn’t resist.

And trust me, some of the climbs were difficult. There were two in particular that included climbs of over 100 steps that were much more steep than I had anticipated. It was similar to climbing parts of Mt. Sinai, but I believe this may have been even more difficult. Either that, or I’m a much bigger fat-tub-of-goo than I was in January at Sinai. In any event, though I lagged behind, I did finally make it to the end, with the help of my trusty Sherpa. And the souvenirs I bought from her at the end of the trip were worth the money, so it was a good trip overall. We had to go another thousand steps down a hill once we were finished, but downhill was much more manageable, obviously.

We spent the night in a tiny village close to the end of the trek. We stayed in what I’ll call a little bed and breakfast, but that is being quite generous. The entire group had some Tsingtao and what our tour guide called “firewater,” which was a rice liquor that was 56% alcohol and tasted like a fruity ouzo. Lights were out before ten a.m.

In the morning, most of us strolled around the village for the scenery and fresh air. We had breakfast of rice porridge, fruit salad, pancakes with chives and various other Chinese breakfast items and then it was time to hop the bus back to Beijing.

I guess I had more to say about the Beijing/Great Wall part of this trip than I had originally anticipated. I still have an article or two to go. Hell, I must really be enjoying myself.