Walking the Wall

We’ve never been any good at bringing things to a close. We’ll put off a big decision until the final moment. We’ll hem and haw and shuffle our feet in the dirt before saying good-bye. We left organising our flight out of Beijing – during the height of tourist season – to a week before the day we were due home.

So it’s only fitting that we managed to delay completing our Great Wall adventure almost as long as humanly possible. What we expected to take six months took 13; the 3000 kilometres we planned to walk somehow became nearly 4000. But even the longest set of structures ever built by humans eventually comes to an end, and that means our trip has as well.

From the desert to the sea – the end of the Great Wall at Laolongtou

At two o’clock on July 7 (07/07/07 – auspicious!), we reached our destination: Laolongtou, or Old Dragon’s Head, the eastern end of the Ming Great Wall. And in a nice bit of symmetry, we were welcomed at the end by the same people who gave us a fantastic send-off from Jiayuguan a year ago, Dong Yaohui and Yan Daojun of the China Great Wall Society.

The moment we walked through Laolongtou’s gates, Mr Yan grabbed us by the elbows, escorted us to a meeting room to collect ourselves and wipe the sweat from our faces, then took us to a courtyard, where we were met by Emma’s parents Di and Mike, representatives from the local government and members of the local media, and even Mr Li and his family.

An achievement of his own – Emma’s dad, Mike, made the journey to Shanhaiguan not long after being seriously ill

Celebrating with Mike and Emma’s mum, Di. Is there anywhere on the wall she can’t go?

And how could we forget that smile? Mr Li, his wife and daughter were even there to welcome us back.

And at that point, with microphones thrust before us and a crowd of curious onlookers waiting for . . . something, it all became real – we were finished!

You go first … Mike, Mr Dong, Di, Emma, Brendan, and Mr Yan

Each of us spoke briefly and Mr Yan translated. Mr Dong said some gracious words on behalf of the Great Wall Society about our trip, the Great Wall exhibitions at the Powerhouse and Melbourne Museums, and our website. We were presented with some lovely bouquets, and everything became blurry – there were pictures for the press, pictures with tourists, pictures with kids. It was exciting, and tiring, and a bit chaotic – in other words, it was just like walking the wall!

Mr Dong and a young wall-walker in the making

So, who’s going first then? Mr Yan, waiting for one of us to talk so he could translate

When the short ceremony was over, Mr Dong took each of us by the hand, and just as he had accompanied us on our first few steps from Jiayuguan Fort 13 months before, walked with us, hand in hand, to the point where the wall meets the sea.

As we’ve talked over the past few weeks about what we might say in our final post, we’ve struggled to come up with a suitable title – we had wanted something that would capture the exhilaration and sense of completion we had imagined we might feel. And of course we do feel those things – you can’t imagine how excited we are to be done and heading home – but in the couple of days since we’ve been back in Beijing, packing up and seeing friends, we’ve also thought a lot about the things we’ll miss as well – walking into a dusty village to a stunned crowd for a five-minute drinks break that turns into an hour, the rhythm of our walking sticks swinging as we move along the path, all the sights and sounds (and smells) of rural China.

So it feels slightly bittersweet to have come to the end of the line – we’ve reached our destination and we’re enormously proud and relieved to have done so, but also just a tiny bit sad.

It’s all a bit much for Emma. Just because no one caught it on camera, doesn’t mean Brendan didn’t cry too.

But putting on his pack for the last time makes it all start to feel a bit real

We want to thank all of you for taking this journey with us, for sticking by us as we trundled through the broken foot and other injuries, for putting up with us as we dealt with technical delays, and for being there for us when we needed you the most. You can’t imagine how important it was to us to know there were people following our blog – it was to you we ran when we’d seen something amazing and had to tell someone, where we turned when we were lonely and exhausted and needed a reason to go on. This blog was our connection to the outside world, and every comment, every personal email and every message passed on was received with love and enthusiasm.

Several people have asked about our future plans, and of course we’ve discussed them endlessly as we walked, but for now we feel the best thing for us to do is to go home, rest a bit, and gain a little perspective in the context of our normal lives. We will compile final trip statistics and post them in the next several days, but this will be our last regular post on the blog. The blog itself, however, will stay up indefinitely and we’ll continue checking it for comments.

We don’t plan to leave Walking the Wall behind entirely, though. We may do some talks, write up a few articles, and who knows, we might even write a book. If you’d like to keep up with our future Great Wall-related plans, please send us an email at WalkingTheWallinfo@gmail.com (a blank email is fine), and we’ll keep you updated. Thank you for all your interest and support. It’s been a great journey and we’re going to miss it.

Putting together our final episode of Wall Angels was a fun but sad experience. Fun, because we got to relive those times, and sad because we know there won’t be any more Wall Angels for us for a while.

If we thought Shanxi and Shaanxi were difficult to walk through, with their endless canyons and windy, snowy weather, well, that was nothing compared to Hebei and Beijing. Both were incredibly difficult. Steep, mountainous country, vertical wall, cliffs, thorns and impenetrable bushes. Our daily kilometre limit dropped from 30kms to 10kms, sometimes down to 5kms, and our finish date moved further and further away. We didn’t have the time to sit around and meet people, we had to keep moving and we had to at least try to reach our daily goal.

Inevitably we met fewer people. That’s not to say that our personal encounters dropped, because on the contrary, with farmers out in the field with the coming of spring, we spoke to a lot more people as the days went on. But it is to say that we didn’t have the time to form as many relationships as we had previously. We had to make a decision to keep moving. If we didn’t, we might never have reached the end.

The Gold Miners

One of our most common questions is what do we do about food and water. How do we get it, how much do we have to carry. Well, to answer those questions we can give you the example of our first set of Wall Angels for Hebei province.

We were walking in a particularly remote area of the province, canyons and hills slowing us down to an incredibly slow pace and the winds of April battering us about. So diversions to get water for the night weren’t really a fun thing to do, especially when they added on a few kilometres of walking to what was already a long day. But when the source of water appears before you … well, you take it, graciously of course.

The Gold Miners were living in a shack just down the hill from the Great Wall. About 10 of them slept on hard single beds in the one room, canvas covering the roof, doors and windows and sheltering them from the wind and cold. They lived there for months at a time with nothing much but a book each, a few large drums of water for washing and drinking, and a small kitchen that could make rice and noodles. Obviously the water came from elsewhere, probably driven up in a truck from a town down in the valley.

We needed at least six litres of water to take with us, which they gave without hesitation. They gave us some tea to drink and to warm us up, then invited us to stay for food. We declined, needing to keep moving before the winds picked up again, which they did as soon as we stepped out the door. The older man watched us go, staying outside in the wind to wave goodbye to us as we walked up the hill and out of view.

The Great Wall Society, Yan Dao Jun and Dong Yaohui

The China Great Wall Society is the leading Chinese organisation working on Great Wall conservation. We got in contact with the Society last year before we set off on our endless journey and were fortunate enough to meet the Secretary-General Dong Yaohui and the society’s editor, Yan Daojun.

Mr Dong leading us to the sea

Mr Yan outside Laolongtou

Mr Dong, a leading expert on the wall and one often sought out by the media for comment, was one of the first men to walk the entire length of the Great Wall. He has published numerous books and articles on the wall and works tirelessly for its preservation. But despite his incredibly busy schedule, he has still managed to make time for us on two very important occasions – our send-off in Jiayuguan, and our finish in Shanhaiguan.

Neither of these would have been as large occasions as they were if it weren’t for the amazing organisational skills of Mr Yan Daojun, who, with three days’ notice, arranged a trip to Shanhaiguan and for local media and government officials to be waiting for us at the end. His contacts are endless, his enthusiasm and energy boundless, and the help and support that he has given us were invaluable for our trip.

Mr Li Hong and family

We have often included drivers in our list of Wall Angels before. That’s because, when we have to base ourselves in a town when faced with obstacles like a broken foot and the like, drivers become invaluable in transporting us to and from the wall. But Mr Li wasn’t just a driver, he was also a friend, an organiser and, on terribly short notice, a great photographer.

We met Mr Li in the town of Qinhuangdao. The heat had forced us to base ourselves there because it just wasn’t possible for us to carry our fully laden backpacks up and over the Hebei mountains in addition to the eight or so litres of water that we would each need every day. With heat in the high 30s, humidity a lot higher, and ne’er a flat spot of walking in sight, one litre of water would be sweated out in about 10 minutes.

So we found Mr Li and commenced what was to become an invaluable working relationship and an even more special friendship. Not sure if he was really ready for the 6:30am starts and the 8pm finishes, but he never complained. And we’re not sure if he was ready for the exploration we had to do, the drives through small villages looking for the wall and the negotiating with the locals that was involved, but he took it all in his stride.

Mr Li, Sabrina and Mrs Huang

When Emma’s parents arrived Mr Li took on the role of tour guide, taking care of them while we were sweating our way up the mountains and calling us on our mobile phone when he needed someone to translate at the restaurant (“Do your parents want rice or noodles?”). When the day finally came to reach the end, he brought his wife, Mrs Huang, and daughter, Sabrina, along who were both wonderful in helping to set up the stage for the finishing function. And at Laolongtou, when we were speechifying and raising our arms in the air and generally running around out of control, Mr Li took control of our cameras and made sure we had good photos of the occasion – he took most of the photos in our final post, above.

Like all good connected Chinese men, he has a QQ number (internet video phone), and pretty soon so will we. That means we’ll be able to stay in contact over the internet and send each other photos. Who knows, maybe Sabrina will even visit us in Sydney. In a very short time, he became a good and trusted friend, and he will be sorely missed.

Well, we’ve rambled our way across our final jurisdictions, Hebei province and Beijing municipality. These eastern areas we hiked through were different in many ways from the western provinces – more populous, greener, much more mountainous. But the overriding theme of our time in the east was the return of summer.

It’s hard to believe we were camping in snow just over two months ago. By the final two weeks of our trip, the corn had grown high, people were selling vegetables from their courtyard gardens, and the first wheat harvest was already underway.

Most people still harvest by hand

Busy like a Brueghel painting

Summertime is also vacation time, and for once we weren’t the only tourists out on the road. The wall traces a giant semi-circle around most of Beijing’s weekend getaway spots, where we joined thousands of Beijingers taking their holidays. We also had some distinguished holiday guests – Dean and Brenda Fletcher – who traveled from Kansas to spend a week with us!

Dean and Brenda (Brendan’s parents) with us at Jinshanling

Emma with a cool summer lunch of fresh veg, dipping sauce and cold roasted chicken

At the little fishing villages everyone is issued a bamboo pole . . .

. . . and if you catch one they’ll grill it on the spot

All the restaurants serve wild mountain herbs – here, try some!

You can have too much summer, though. In mid-June the weather turned extremely, even dangerously hot. Every day we had temperatures between 35° and 40°, up to 41° on one day. Add in 50-60% humidity, and you have hiking conditions that are always uncomfortable, often punishing, and present a real threat of heat exhaustion.

Brendan after cooling down under a waterfall

This baby goat had collapsed of heat exhaustion. It began to recover shortly after Emma took it to the shade of a nearby watchtower, where its herd was resting.

But on the more temperate days, summer gives everyone a chance to get outside and do the sorts of summer things people do anywhere – go to outdoor markets, throw a bit of meat on the fire and have a beer, or just hang out on the side of the road. Whether we’ve spent days getting to know them or just a few minutes chatting under the shade of a tree, one of the great joys of our trip – and probably the thing that will stick with us longest – has been meeting the wonderful, generous, friendly people of rural China. We will miss them.

A weaver and his loom

Yarn piling up in front of a wheelbarrow

And we thought our packs were heavy

Sprinkling spices on some chuanzi’s (mutton skewers)

Demonstrating proper chuanzi consumption technique

A man on a mission

The Australian Ginger Rogers and . . . the Chinese Ginger Rogers

Fresh produce and a new bag of tobacco – what’s not to smile about?

Brendan sniffing the sea air

You’d think that after more than 3500 kilometres, we’d have seen about everything there is to see on the wall. It’s certainly true that not everything is as fresh as it once was, and we’re very tired and ready to go home.

Still, the wall somehow manages to astound us on a daily basis, and not just because of how outrageously hard it is to walk along. There are several hundred kilometres of wall in eastern Hebei, between Beijing and Shanhaiguan, and in many ways the Hebei wall combines the best aspects of Beijing’s famous but heavily touristed sites and the less well-known parts of the wall in the west.

The wall traverses several geological zones on its march to the sea, or so it seems – geology’s not a real strong point with us. We do know pretty rocks though, and we’ve enjoyed watching the wall change colour and mood in concert with its geo-environment.

Like a patchwork quilt of colours

The Marble Great Wall, near Baiyangyu

The mist makes for slippery rocks, but it does heighten the colours

Much of the Hebei wall lies in ruins. Bricks and cut stone have been stripped from the foundations, arrowholes have been stolen by vandals, and in places, it’s difficult to tell whether stone walls are merely a foundation or the wall in its entirety. But sad as it is to see the wall deteriorate, you’ve gotta admit, some of the ruins are picturesque.

A stone door arch

This tower’s roof has collapsed, allowing sunlight in

Inexplicably, small sections remain even when everything around them has crumbled

Despite the ravages of time, we’ve also seen some unusual architectural features in Hebei that we’ve seen nowhere else in their original setting.

One of the few two-storey towers we’ve seen outside reconstructed sections

Every watchtower has either brick or stone doorway arches, but it’s unusual to see the two styles side by side

One of the few character carvings we have seen

The most important thing to know about eastern Hebei’s scenery is that it is almost completely mountainous – just when we’ve hauled ourselves up one mountain, another one looms up in front of us. The wall manages to stick to ridges most of the time, with long, incredible drop-offs on one or either side, but eventually, unfortunately for us hikers, it has to come down. Having said that, it is probably one of the most beautiful sections we have seen.

The wall hugging the cliff near Shanhaiguan

Classic Chinese pine trees on one side, farmers’ terraces on the other

Where the wall hits the cliff at Jiumenkou, Nine Gate Pass, 15 kilometres from Shanhaiguan

After over a year of walking and countless arguments about which way to go, the end is actually in sight. Literally!!! Tomorrow, Saturday July 7, 2007 (7/7/07), we will reach Old Dragon’s Head at Shanhaiguan and conclude our Walking the Wall adventure.

We still have a few things to wrap up (like the last five k’s), so stay tuned for our farewell posts and photos. We’ll publish them over the next couple of days (once we’ve managed to yank the beer can out of Brendan’s hand and prise the wine glass from Emma’s clutches).

Marathon runners use the phrase “hitting the wall” to describe a feeling that usually sets in about three-quarters of the way through the race, where your legs get heavy, your breathing becomes laboured, and you feel an overwhelming desire to just give up.

Applying the three-quarters rule to our marathon Great Wall trip, we’ve been hitting the wall for about 1000 kilometres now!

Must break through the wall, must break through the wall

Walking is a lower impact activity than running, though, and in truth we’ve been holding up fine physically and well enough mentally. But our trip did change dramatically at the three-quarters mark, and in ways not dissimilar to “hitting the wall.” Basically, the hiking became much, much, much, much (how much?) much more difficult.

From Jiayuguan through western Hebei, walking the wall is probably about as easy a trip as you could expect for any route that crosses deserts and mountain ranges; has no trail, marked or unmarked; and is poorly mapped. The landscape is open, the footing is good more often than not, and as long as you can see the wall – and you usually can – it’s tough to get too lost. From the western border of Beijing municipality to Shanhaiguan, however, the Great Wall is a different animal.

The first difficulty is simply finding the wall. In Beijing municipality (a territory of 17,000 square kilometres that includes large rural areas as well as the city of Beijing), the wall runs along a range of mountain that form a horseshoe shape enclosing the city and its hinterlands, but it does not run anything like continuously. Where there are gaps, or passes, in the mountains, the wall can be impressive and elaborate; but once it ascends from these low points, it often stops abruptly at a cliff or disappears among a maze of sawtooth ridges. For us hikers that means that we get to spend a few hours puffing and grunting and sweating our way up a hill – only to find out that there’s a cliff or a peak that makes it impossible to go any further.

The wall disappearing up a peak

Emma picking her way through a gap back to the wall

The small box in the middle of the photo is a watchtower – we didn’t quite make it to that one

The wall becomes more continuous in eastern Hebei as it makes its final push toward the sea, but the going doesn’t get any easier. Parts of the wall are so overgrown that it’s difficult to make any progress at all, while on some parts the only practical path is a narrow strip of stone or brick at the edge of the wall.

Sometimes the vegetation next to the wall is even worse than what grows on it

But back on the wall, the only bit you can walk on is usually next to a 5-metre drop

Where the wall is free of vegetation, the footing can be so bad that we’re both reduced to tears, or at least extended fits of swearing. If it’s not steep it’s rocky, if it’s not rocky part of the wall has fallen away, if the wall’s not falling apart . . . it’s steep!

Am I there yet?

The wall can be this rocky for miles on end

Working around a section that’s collapsed

And most of the time, going down is far worse than going up

But we can’t complain too much. If there weren’t any hard bits, how could we ever get cool pictures of Emma looking like a real mountaineer?