Walking the Wall

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