Those Mongol hordes that the Ming Dynasty were trying to fend off must have been some pretty fearsome warriors. The Chinese, apparently, didn’t even think the Helan mountain range could deter them, not with its 180 kilometres of arid, craggy peaks that rise 3500 metres and were once home to bears and wolves. So they built a 10 metre high mud wall instead. That’ll send them running back to Ulaanbaatar or wherever they came from.

Try climbing over this

The wall is the only landscape feature below the mountains

But fun and games aside, the Helan Shan wall is by far the most impressive section we’ve seen in the roughly 1200 kilometres we’ve walked since leaving Jiayuguan. It is sturdy and tall, rising up to 10 metres in some parts. It is long and continuous, stretching across wide dry river beds as it cradles the base of the mountain range. But most of all it is wide, wide enough at least for men and horses to patrol.

Note the wide walkway on top of the wall (and the power lines cutting through the middle)

This section is probably wide enough for horses to walk along the top two abreast

The size of the wall and the number of beacon towers dotted throughout the mountain range suggest that this was a very important section to control. When it was built it would have protected the fertile fields along the Yellow River and the capital of Yinchuan; even today the wall defines the border between Ningxia and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regions.

Providing cover around a dry river bed

One thing that is easy to forget, however, as we walk the isolated stretches of wall is that, in its heyday, it would have been populated by thousands of soldiers, officials, horses, and all the logistical support necessary to keep them ready and waiting for the enemy. It would have been anything but an empty landscape.

These mystery bumps supporting the main beacon tower are a common sight

There are footholds that reach the top every 10 metres or so along the wall

Deep canyons and long winding dry river beds flowing out of the mountains could have potentially provided an enemy army with an easy route through and well-protected cover. Cover, that is, until they came abruptly to the wall. You see, the Chinese didn’t let a little thing like a river stop them from building the Great Wall. In the first two photos below, you can see the wall running alongside and stopping at the banks of a river. The third one shows the drainage provided within the wall for a small gully – probably at one point there was more extensive drainage provided all across a river.

A beacon tower sits on the bend of a river bed

At one time, maybe the wall didn’t stop so abruptly at the river bank

Even if larger or more numerous drains were placed across larger riverbeds, you can imagine the maintenance required to prevent extensive erosion

One other feature of the wall that we observed along this section was a stretch of roughly 30 metres long that was clad in stone. We know that in many parts of the wall, the rammed earth that made up the core was protected by stone. It is not clear how much wall was stone-covered originally – whether the cover was extensive or sporadic, or whether these stones have been taken away over the centuries by farmers and villagers for use in constructing buildings – but the section pictured was on a particularly steep bit of hill. You can see where the stones have been pulled away, but maybe the steepness has prevented all of the rocks from disappearing.

You can see the mud wall in the bottom left corner where the stones have been removed

Just east of the town of Shikong, the Yellow River takes a turn to the north and the Great Wall turns with it. For 90 kilometres the wall runs south to north along the foothills of the Helan Shan, an isolated mountain range with peaks as high as 3500 metres.

The Great Wall at Sanguankou

Historical details on the Helan Shan wall are sketchy (in English, at least). About all we have been able to find out is that Sanguankou, a series of fortifications about 40 kilometres west of Yinchuan, the capital of Ningxia, was built in 1540. Presumably the Helan Shan wall was constructed around the same time.

You might see the odd photo or two of the Helan Shan wall in the better books on the Great Wall, but it’s not especially well known to tourists. Which is a shame, because it is probably the most impressive section of wall in the west, and it’s located reasonably close to a nice tourist town in Yinchuan.

The wall and some foundations of abandoned buildings

Although the wall in this area doesn’t conform to the bricks-and-crenellations stereotype of the Great Wall modeled on sections near Beijing, it’s stunning nevertheless – huge, largely well preserved, and set against a scenic backdrop that can hardly be beat. Sometimes it climbs and dips among the small hills that lie below the mountains proper, then it drops to the plains and runs straight as an arrow for kilometres on end.

Morning sunlight reflecting off the wall at the base of the mountains

While most of the western sections of the wall that we’ve been through run alongside fields, pastures and villages, this section does not; by Chinese standards, it is truly remote. The agricultural villages near the Yellow River are generally 15-20 kilometres away, and between them and the wall there’s a whole lot of nothing.

Looking southeast across the wall to the Yellow River

There are, however, a few shepherds who live along the wall. We didn’t talk to many of these men and women, as they were generally tending their flocks up in the hills above us, but we did have a brief chat with one shepherd, Mr Wang, who invited us to stop for a rest – after first calling off his unchained attack hound.

Mr Wang standing in front of his house

Unlike most of the shepherds we’ve met, and unlike most rural Chinese, Mr Wang does not live in a village, or with anyone at all, but instead stays alone in a tiny, isolated homestead. Once he had the dog under control, he took us in and offered us a bit of rice, but seeing as he maintained a standard of hygiene common to many longtime bachelors, we had to beg off. So we sat and listened to Mr Wang advise us on our clothes (much too thin for the cold winter weather) and hiking (very bad for the knees; we should get a car).

Mr Wang was a cheerful and enthusiastic conversationalist, but his dialect was pretty much incomprehensible to us. Once we’d run out of topics that we could convey by charades, he showed us a little path he’d constructed around a particularly steep section of wall and sent us on our way.

Waving goodbye – Mr Wang’s storage buildings are on the left and the wall is on the right

The only other contemporary human presence on the wall was the occasional wind farm constructed to take advantage of the constant gusts pouring out of the mountain canyons. Huge turbines like those pictured below are already a common sight along the Helan Shan, and soon they will be even more numerous if all proceeds according to plan. Ningxia is scheduled to build nine new wind-power plants by 2020 at a cost of US$2.2 billion, which would make it China’s biggest wind power generator and a leader in China’s ambitious effort to accelerate its development of renewable energy resources (see China Speeds Up Renewable Energy Development and Ningxia to Build Nine Wind Power Plants).

The wall is probably four or five metres high in this photo – so you can get an idea of the size of the turbines

The lack of human habitation seems to be good for the animals, and for the first time on the trip we actually saw some large wildlife. Granted, most of the animals were probably descended from escaped livestock – feral horses and camels – but compared to their domestic brethren, these guys looked great, with healthy winter coats, full bellies and well-developed musculature.

Feral horses near Sanguankou

NEEEE HOWWW!!

No, it’s left-right, left-right, you idiot!

But we did, amazingly, see some native antelope on three different occasions. The first time we didn’t manage to get a picture, which is unfortunate because we saw a large male with impressive horns.

The second time, however, we were ready (and lucky). On our way out to the wall we saw a small herd of five several hundred meters away. They were very shy, and tended to run whenever we got close enough for a decent photo, but we did manage to get a few shots off from long distance. The resolution’s not great because the photos are severely cropped, but they appear to be the same species as the first animal we saw, albeit with smaller horns.

The horns are barely visible on the two animals directly facing the camera; click for a better view

If anyone has information on what species these animals might be, please write in as we’d love to know. The name in Chinese is huang lingyang, but that’s not a huge help as it just means “yellow antelope.” From what we can glean from the internet, the strongest possibility is that they’re Mongolian gazelles: the size, colouring, horn size and shape, and habitat all match with the internet descriptions; and we are within their historical range. However, we haven’t found anything to suggest there are currently herds on the eastern slope of the Helan Shan.

Bounding away for the last time – you can see the wall in the background

Come on, it’s lovely weather for a Wall Walk together with you

Can I put up the first ornament?

Deck the tent . . . fa la la la la

It’s the best tree EVER!

Happy Holidays to you and your loved ones!

Shikong Dafo Temple – the grottoes are carved into the cliff in the background

From the first day of our trip, the influence of the Silk Road has been a constant – we’ve seen it in the pattern of settlement along the trade routes, the ethnic diversity of Gansu Province, and of course, the famous Buddhist cave temples at Dunhuang and Matisi.

Even now that we’re off the main branch of the Silk Road, it is still a presence. We’re currently in Ningxia, which has been designated a Hui Autonomous Region in recognition of the Hui Muslim minority, many of whom are descended from Central Asian and Middle Eastern traders who migrated to China 1000 years ago along the Silk Road. And for about a 50 kilometre stretch east of Zhongwei, we saw several small, probably ancient, Buddhist cave temples, though all but one were locked.

The exception was Shikong Dafo Temple, otherwise known as Shikong Grottoes. The cave temples themselves are about 1400 years old, but a modern temple (i.e. probably just a few hundred years old) encloses the most important caves. The grottoes sit directly below a fragment of the Great Wall that runs along the edge of a sandstone cliff.

One of the outer grottoes

Unlike Dunhuang or Matisi, the grottoes are not yet restored (there is an 11 million RMB project to develop the site underway). There are no souvenir stalls out front, no interpretive signs or tour guides. Nearly all of the painted murals have been destroyed, and most of the statues are broken.

The eyes of the statues look remarkably real

Despite this, the grottoes are moving, more so even than Dunhuang or Matisi in an odd way. Some of this is probably just the imagined but still genuinely felt sense of discovery that accompanies stumbling across something that hasn’t been gussied up for the tourist dollar.

Shikong’s artifacts haven’t been well-preserved, as in a museum or curated temple cave, and as a result its history hasn’t been frozen. It is possible to see, and feel, time’s passage in the crumbling ruins. Some of the statues seem almost to be mourning their own decay, and they appear all the more alive for it.

Despite being constantly exposed to the air, the colours are still quite vivid

That Shikong remains an active temple also contributes to the sense of living history. When we were there, one monk and his followers were chanting in a processional through the courtyards. Other monks scurried about the temple on their busy schedule of daily tasks.

Classes, scriptures, offerings, chants … all in a day’s work for a monk

Finally, the artifacts are not solely cultural treasures of the distant past, they are also contemporary objects of veneration. Small offerings and red ribbons decorate many of the relics. In the outdoor grottoes, which have been almost entirely stripped of their murals and artifacts, small icons have been placed on the shelves, and on one headless statue, someone has gently put a cap on the shoulders.

Note: The indoor (cave) photos in this post were taken without flash in order to prevent any damage to the artifacts, using a 70-300 mm zoom lense at 3200 ISO at 1/40 second shutter speed, the slowest we could manage without a tripod. As a result, the photos are somewhat grainy.

Actually, it cameth about ten days ago, November 24 to be precise. We woke up to a bit of a chill. I crawled out of bed and pulled open the curtains.

“It’s snowing!” I cried with boyish enthusiasm.

“My throat hurts!” Emma lied shamelessly.

We agreed, as part of our new “discretion is the better part of valour” philosophy, that there was no sense in courting disaster by wandering out into the raging snow flurry.

When the next day rolled around, though, it was still snowing (sort of), and we realised there was no denying the change in seasons. We shimmied into our woolen underwear, pulled on our gloves and balaclavas, and headed out into the elements.

Snow patterns in the dunes

By the time we made it to the wall, there wasn’t a lot of snow left (there wasn’t a whole lot to begin with). But it looked pretty, and better still, the north wind gave Emma an excuse to show off her new winter wardrobe.

Do these colours suit me?

The last traces of snow on the crest of the wall