The Great Wall of China

If you go to China, one of the must see things is to go check out The Great Wall of China. The Great Wall is something that you have known about since you were a kid and I remember hearing growing up that The Great Wall can be seen from space. Even with this childhood knowledge, I was astonished with how vast, magnificent, and beautiful The Great Wall really is…

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My friend Ibrahim had just joined me at the hostel I was staying at. I met Ibrahim before I started my journey to learn more about Africa and it was great meeting up with him in China. We had just finished up the Design of Medical Devices (DMD) China 2018 conference and Ibrahim had a couple of days before he headed back to Minneapolis to continue working as an Innovation Fellow at the University of Minnesota. This meant we had 1 day to see The Great Wall of China.

We spent the night before planning with a girl named Hayle from the UK. She was a hard core bicycler who doesn’t take crap from anyone and she had just got done traveling through Central Asia. She showed us some videos of bike races and times she had crashed including one where she broke her collarbone and finished the race. She had already done a good bit of research so we let her take the lead on planning our route.

The Great Wall is over 20,000km long so it is not as simple as just showing up at one set location. Our criteria involved the following:

• See both wild parts of the wall along with some restored parts
• Be on the wall for sunset
• Leave after 9:45AM (I had a meeting in the morning)

While Hayle was researching different blogs and other sites seeing what other travelers have done, I was contacting a friend I met in Xi’an who lived in Beijing. Here is the summary of 3 of the possibilities:

• Badaling: Most popular but won’t see wild wall
• Jiankou: Completely wild wall
• Mutianyu: both wild and restored sections and easy to get to

His favorite part was Jiankou and had done a trip with camping one night from Jiankou to Mutianyu last October. He said it was the most rewarding hike but parts of the wall were pretty treacherous. This info led us to focus in on the section of the wall in between Jiankou and Mutianyu.

Hayle found a route that was about a 4 hour hike from somebody’s blog that we decided on. There was directions on how to get there by transportation and how to find the trail head.  Now time to get supplies (food and water).

One thing that I was worried about was that up on the wall it would be even colder than Beijing because of the altitude and location along with more exposure. The “winter” clothes I had consisted of a red light fleece, gray fleece from my Great Uncle James and Wendy along with a hat with a cat on it and a scarf, and a rain jacket to keep out the wind. This was barely warm enough for Beijing. The issue was that after China I was only going to warm countries so I wasn’t too keen on spending money to buy more warm clothes.

Shown below are the clothes they gave me before I left Shanghai. I usually wore the bedazzled cat on the back so people wouldn’t see it. The look kind of has a Link vibe from the video game Zelda (my brother had me play Breath of the Wild before I left on my journey).

I opted to wear an additional long sleeve shirt over my t-shirt for extra warmth. As long as we kept moving, this should be good enough for our hike. And wearing 2 pairs of socks kept my feet perfect temperature.

We set off after my meeting finished at 9:45AM. We had a tight schedule to try to catch one of the buses that only travels at 11:30 and 4:30. We had to catch one train, one bus that left every 5 min, and then the 2nd bus mentioned above. If we missed the 2nd bus we would have to hire somebody to drive us out there.

Unfortunately the mart had just closed the night before when we went to get food so we had to grab food in the morning. We were like kids in a candy store buying all of the different fruits, snacks, and meals for our trek. Rebecca, a girl from Denmark, joined us on our hike and she introduced me to some hazelnut chocolate from Europe called Kinder Bueno. She also had come from the Philippines and had spent a month on a sailboat going around to different islands. Very cool! We enjoyed swapping tales of our times traveling throughout that beautiful country.

Because of our shopping we got going a little later than planned and ended up missing the 2nd bus. Maybe this was supposed to be because the 1st bus we were on we met a new friend also wanting to hike The Great Wall named Tim who was from Germany. Our hiking crew was now complete.

While on the first bus a few stops away from our stop a guy came in the side door and yelled that we needed to get off now if we were going to the Great Wall. I guess this was a scam that Hayle read about where drivers try to get tourists to get off early and then take a ride with them for much higher prices to the Great Wall. We did not fall for it.

When we did get off at our correct stop we knew we had already missed the 2nd bus. Now we had to figure out how to get to the section of the wall that isn’t often frequented. We were bombarded by people trying to take advantage of tourists offering overpriced rides and tours. One kept waving a pamphlet of the Great Wall in front of Hayle’s face while she was trying to look up possible ways to go on her phone. She got angry and grabbed the pamphlet which caused the pamphlet to rip. I am sure this was very important to this man’s livelihood to establish his credibility to drive unsuspecting tourists to The Great Wall. He was very upset and made a gesture as if to hit Hayle. Hayle retaliated by getting up into his face ready for a fight. We broke it up and until that day I never thought I would almost see a fight in China! People in China are usually very nice and not very confrontational. Definitely do not mess with Hayle!

We walked away from this group of people and figured out our plan. We watched as the next group of people from the next bus were bombarded for rides. It would be good to find a ride somewhere else.

We found a young man with a van that agreed to take us after a long time of trying to communicate where it was that we wanted to go. He had a nice minivan that could fit the 5 of us. We bargained him down to a reasonable price that was probably still a little more than we should pay. That was alright though. It ended up perfectly and we did not have to deal with people in your face trying to get your service.

It was a lazy, comfortable drive with the winding road and sun warming all of us. We napped and enjoyed the views as we got closer. The driver was not used to mountain roads and took the drive very slow. It took us over an hour to reach where we wanted to go and by the end the driver wanted more money because it took too long. We gave him a very slight tip of left over change.

We did not know exactly where we were but luckily Hayle had the directions to where the trailhead was to get up to an opening in the Great Wall.

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We came across our first sign which was a good “sign” we were going the right direction (no pun intended!). After that we saw a more welcoming sign to our journey.

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Now it was time for an hour hike up to the Great Wall. The views were breathtaking and we took many photos before even arriving at The Great Wall.

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We eventually reached The Great Wall. There was a portion that had stacked bricks to climb to an opening of the Great Wall. The bricks were wobbily so you had to be careful to knock over the whole pile.

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Man, the view! We were now on The Great Wall. There is something that comes over you being to such an amazing historical place.

We all knew that we were living through something that we would remember for the rest of our lives. 

Now to get to the rest of the wall we still needed to do some more climbing…

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Once we got to the top of the first tower we did what any logical group of Millennials would do. Have a photoshoot! And of course you have to show off your U of M shirt when you have it!

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Now we began our trek along The Great Wall. Here are some of my favorite pictures along the way.

At this point we had to decide if we take the short cut or climb up this section of the wall. “It doesn’t look that far.”

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It was steep but worth it for the views.

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When we got to the top of this part we marveled at how the people over 2000 years ago were able to build this on this cliff. It was quite the feat.

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Here is the favorite picture of me from our journey. I saw the frame when somebody else walked through but missed the shot. I then asked Tim or Hayle (can’t remember) to take the shot of me.

The travel down the steep part ended up being much more difficult than the climb up. The rock steps were worn smooth and it was hard not to slip on them. The best techniques for going down ended up being using the wall or scuttling down on your butt. Hayle thought about sliding down but I quickly warned her she would tear up her pants very fast. I then recommended that she slide down on a rock to prevent this. Ibrahim, the doctor of the group, quickly squashed this idea. I was joking but I think Hayle almost considered doing it.

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Now that we got down the steep part, back to walking normal!

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Holes in wall to shoot through with crossbows for invaders.

Drain for runoff water.

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Now more cool photos. I apologize for all of the photos! I take pictures of what I think is beautiful. Unfortunately/fortunately, that is most of The Great Wall! By putting it into gallery mode some of the photos have parts cut off. Click on the photos to see the actual full photos!

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Eventually we stumbled upon an area with a bunch of red ribbons with different writings on them. We signed one of them.

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Now we reached the restored section.

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Eventually we made it to Mutianyu and were ready to go back. Unfortunately we missed the last bus so we had to figure out a way to get back. We stopped at the first restaurant we saw. Keep in mind that this is in the heart of a major tourist destination so you can be sure people will try to overcharge you for things. We stopped in and asked one of the staff to call a cab for 5. As we waited we noticed there was beer. The guy mentioned the prices of different kinds and they were 15 yuan, 14 yuan, and 13 yuan. We said we would get 3 so he popped the top off of them instantly. When we went to pay he said that he had said 50 yuan earlier and then tried to get us to pay way too much. We said no way and then he dropped it to 30. Some people have no honor or truth to their word. We did not buy them and it put a bitter taste in our mouths. He resealed the bottles.

You have to barter in a lot of places of China but most people are fine to barter with. It’s only when you are in the really touristy areas that people try to screw you over.

When the driver finally came he asked for 300 yuan for the 5 of us. We knew this was also way too much. We tried to barter down to 100 yuan. Some of the group wanted to just pay because it was late and it seemed like there weren’t many options. This was part of the game and you just had to play. After awhile the driver started to pull away to make it seem like he was going to leave. We started walking down the path towards the village. He stopped a little ways down. We walked past and then then he pulled past us. A little further down we agreed to 150 yuan. Not a good price but given the circumstances it was perfect for what we wanted to pay.

After a long time going back we celebrated our day with the peking duck which is a food for what Beijing is known for.

I hope you enjoyed my recap of the trip to The Great Wall. There are many other places to explore so I believe I will be back the next time I am in China. I would highly recommend going in person and checking out the wild parts if you are able!