Walking the Wall

Emma and Olivia Newton-John

Around this time last year, when Brendan and I were struggling to climb impossible slopes, fighting our way through brush and brambles, and sweating through blistering hot afternoons, I swore to myself, on more than one occasion, that nothing – nothing – could make me go through all of that again.

But I was wrong.

Walking the Wall Part 2 is about to begin, and this time ‘round it’s for a cause – the fight against cancer. As some of you may know, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at the age of 30, a few months after Brendan and I were married. We were devastated, of course, but practical. My Dad had survived lung, liver and bowel cancers, so I could survive this. As it turned out, thyroid cancer is, according to the doctors, “the best type of cancer to have”. The cancer is removed with either part or all of the thyroid gland, and survival rates are very high. My partial thyroidectomy was a success, and I continue to monitor my gland and control my thyroid hormone levels with medication.

It was partly because of this scare that Brendan and I were encouraged to go and walk the Great Wall of China in 2006-2007, a physical and mental challenge to prove that I was stronger than the illness.

But most people aren’t so lucky with cancer, as many of you would know. And it is because of this that I am returning to the wall.

From April 7-29 I will be joining Olivia Newton-John, Sir Cliff Richard, Dannii Minogue, singer James Reyne, actress Sigrid Thornton, dancer Paul Mercurio and dozens of other athletes, celebrities and cancer survivors such as myself to walk 228 kilometres on the Great Walk to Beijing, all of us raising money for the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne. This centre will bring under one roof a comprehensive suite of cancer services, including research programs, an innovative Wellness Centre, and facilities for acute and palliative care patients.

All of us talking part in the Great Walk are supporting the Cancer Centre by asking our friends, colleagues and family members to “sponsor our steps” by making a donation at the Great Walk to Beijing website.

Cancer is an illness that will strike 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women before the age of 85. By its often devastating impacts on our closest friends and loved ones, it touches us all. If you can sponsor me, I would be honoured to represent my friends and family out there on the Great Wall. I will be walking for my Dad, walking for my godmother Pru, for George’s godfather Tony, for my cousin in London, for my two close girlfriends, and for all the people we have lost to cancer and who are going through it right now.

If you would like to sponsor my steps, just click on the banner below.

Alternatively, you can attend a fundraiser to be held in Sydney in mid-May on my return and donate at the door. Or you can click and go to the fundraiser!

You’ll see on the website that there’s a bit of healthy competition encouraged between the walkers, and in order to compete I have to get my sponsorship numbers up and clicking away while we’re walking. The numbers of donors are counted every day.

*****

Memories of burning thighs and blisters aside, both Brendan and I are over the moon about returning to China. It will be wonderful to see the Wall with fresh (and non-exhausted) eyes, to be able to share the pleasure of hiking along it with others, and to see some of the old friends we made on our first Great Wall walk.

We probably won’t be able to blog as frequently as we did on our first journey, but do check back here at the site in April and May. If we have time for nothing else, we’ll post a retrospective on the journey when we return.

Most importantly, head on over to the Great Walk to Beijing and sponsor my steps. Together, we can make a difference!

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.

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?

. . . and he’s bigger, badder and uglier than ever.

(If you somehow missed the first two episodes of this epic thriller series, click on Attack of the Killer Cicadas and Attack of the Killer Cicadas (Part 2).)

Recognise this? (Hint: look at the photo up top)

On our first visit to the Gubeikou-Simatai section of wall, we didn’t really understand how unique it is among Beijing Great Wall sites. While some sites cater to the demands of mass tourism – Badaling, Mutianyu – they’ve done so at the expense of conservation, with long sections of original wall actually destroyed to make way for reconstructions. Other sections we’ve hiked – the Beijing Knot and Jiankou – are beautifully preserved, but unless you’re a pretty fit hiker, you’re not all that likely to see them.

Along the wall from Gubeikou to Simatai, the demands of tourism and conservation are, at least for now, in a kind of balance. The pass at Gubeikou is completely authentic; as one interpretive sign proudly states without exaggeration, every single brick on the Gubeikou wall is original. There is some reconstruction at Jinshanling and Simatai, and while it would have been better if the original wall had been left alone, at least the reconstructed sections are built upon original foundations and seem to us to be well done. In places it’s hard to tell where original wall ends and reconstruction begins.

Emma walking on an original section

This is part of the three-kilometre reconstructed section near Jinshanling

The reddish bricks are original and the newer bricks are grey

At the same time, it’s not difficult to get to the wall at any of the main access points. The walking is challenging in places, but also comfortable enough that even beginning hikers or those with physical limitations can get on the wall for a good stroll.

The hiking was so pleasant . . .

that even Emma was persuaded to smile . . .

while I remained cheerful as ever

It would be nice to think that this happy balance will last forever, but there are a few signs that it might not. The reconstructed section at Jinshanling, near the mid-point of the hike, is quite recent; and this being China, it would be naïve to think that the original stretches of wall from Gubeikou to Simatai are safe from “improvement.” There is more than enough – far more than enough – reconstructed wall in the Beijing area for anyone to get an idea of what the wall looked like 500 years ago. It’s hard to imagine what good could come from additional reconstruction.

When sections are reconstructed, buildings like this are destroyed

A more present-day concern is that the wall just doesn’t seem well managed. We saw numerous recently constructed paved pathways and staircases between Gubeikou and Simatai, and though we can see a place for minor trail improvements built in accordance with an actual management plan, the little projects we saw looked more like ad hoc jobs done more or less for the hell of it.

An example of “21st Century Staircase for Tourists”

You can see a paved path to the left of the wall

In addition, we were asked to pay for “tickets” on five separate occasions: twice from well-marked ticket offices that were obviously legitimate, once from a woman in a Great Wall T-shirt who was probably legitimate, once from a group of women with no identification who were probably not legitimate, and once from a farmer with a hand-written note in English requesting payment for a detour through the fields, which was probably not official but seems reasonable. At the last legal watchtower at Simatai, the security guards offered to look away for 20 RMB if we wanted to hike past the “Entry Prohibited” signs to the dangerous and fragile sixteenth watchtower (we declined the offer). The amount of money involved in this small-time fee gouging and bribery is trivial from the perspective of most tourists, but that’s not really the point – if our experience with fees and regulations is any indicator of the overall quality of the management of the wall from Gubeikou to Simatai, its future is far from secure.

Taken individually, none of the problems we encountered is the end of the world, and they didn’t really affect our enjoyment of the day’s hike. But when problems like this are taken together, multiplied over time, and combined with increasing tourist pressure, this is how places can get ruined. And when you consider that Gubeikou to Simatai is really the only Great Wall site where most people can experience long sections of original, unreconstructed wall without crowds, carnival rides and (too many) vendors, that would be a terrible shame.

If the Beijing wall were a series of guidebooks, the Gubeikou-Simatai section would be the Lonely Planet – undeveloped for large-scale tourism but attracting groups of like-minded people all seeking out their own slice of private wall. It is also one of the best relatively remote sections of the Great Wall that can easily be hiked by people without 3000 kilometres of experience behind them. That was good news for us when we first came to China in 2005, having never stepped foot on the world’s longest wall before.

A charity fundraising group from England tackles the Gubeikou wall

Our first journey to the Great Wall was with Intrepid Travel as part of a fundraising campaign for the NSW Cancer Council. We did what most groups do – walk from Gubeikou to Simatai over two days, struggling down the hill in the middle at Jinshanling and asking ourselves how the hell were we ever going to reach the part of the wall that we could see in the distance.

You want me to go up that! The Simatai wall running up the furthest ridge

An original watchtower with Simatai in the distance

For very good reasons, this section is still very popular with the charity groups – in fact, when we were there a few weeks ago as part of this walk, we came across a group from England raising money for breast cancer and another Intrepid Travel group. Walking this section gives people the chance to see 20 kilometres of mostly original wall in absolutely stunning scenery.

No loose stones or falling rocks, now that’s what I call smooth walking

Might be a bit steep, but wall like this poses no danger to walkers

Apart from a few kilometres in the middle at Jinshanling, the wall is mostly unreconstructed but has suffered far less damage than many of the other parts of the wall we have seen. This means you can still see elements of original Great Wall construction without feeling like it was put together for your benefit as a tourist.

The arrow loop – soldiers can view the enemy through the top hole while remaining protected and shoot through the lower hole

Barrier walls – shown here on a reconstructed section – were designed to protect soldiers when steep slopes would otherwise leave them exposed to enemy fire

Barrier walls on an original section

The extension in the middle is a wall terrace or horse face wall that gave soldiers a better view and a more flexible battlefield

In ways both good and bad, Mutianyu is a sort of Badaling Lite. Like Badaling, it’s extensively reconstructed, but more of the original materials are incorporated, and to our untutored but reasonably experienced eyes the reconstruction at Mutianyu seems more authentic. As at Badaling, there’s an assortment of tourist facilities ranging from the outrageously tacky to the slightly less tacky – cable cars, toboggan rides, vendors and hotels – but at Mutianyu the bells and whistles intrude less on the Great Wall experience. And of course there are tourists at Mutianyu, but you’d be hard pressed to call them crowds.

A lonely stretch on the tourist section

However, unlike at Badaling, the original wall is easily accessible from the developed section. Well-preserved unreconstructed wall extends from both ends of the tourist site, toward Jiankou in the west and down to the village of Xhuadi in the east.

Now, there is the small matter of signs forbidding entry to the unreconstructed sections, but as with many rules in China, it’s hard to know whether you should take the signs’ prohibitions seriously. Just a few kilometres beyond the “Entry Forbidden” sign at the western end of the Mutianyu tourist site, there are well-maintained and well-trodden trails leading from near the village of Xizhazi to the unreconstructed Mutianyu wall, with signage sponsored by the Beijing 2008 Olympics Committee and BHP Billiton. So, if you take both sets of signs at face value, it’s okay to go onto the unreconstructed section of Mutianyu from the west but not from the east. Or you can just do what everyone else does, and ignore the signs prohibiting entry.

Don’t arrest me, I’m coming from the west!

Anyhow, we did catch a few quiet moments at Mutianyu, especially in the unreconstructed section. Some of the watchtowers seemed almost like little Chinese gardens, and Mutianyu was by far the lushest part of the wall we’ve seen.

Inside one of Mutianyu’s many watchtowers

Awwwww

The view from where we rejoined the wall after Jiankou

Despite enjoying ourselves, we came away from Mutianyu feeling uneasy about the tourist development there. As we mentioned in our Badaling post, it seems necessary to us that there be one site on the Great Wall developed for mass tourism – it’s entirely appropriate that such an important symbol of China be made easily accessible to everyone, and that probably means large scale tourist facilities, souvenir stands and huge car parks crowded with tour buses.

The Mutianyu chairlift and toboggan (cable cars are at another spot)

But what’s arguably appropriate in one place is not necessarily appropriate everywhere, and we didn’t see the need for chairlifts, tobbogans and wholesale wall reconstruction at Mutianyu – it seems to us that one Badaling is quite enough. And while the reconstruction at Mutianyu may be more authentic than Badaling’s and the tourist facilities more restrained, we’re just not sure we see the point.

So we’d been hiking for about 15 minutes this morning when a grapefruit-sized rock came flying out of nowhere and hit me in the face. I mean, hell, why not? They way things have been going lately I was practically expecting it.

We were a bit worried that some dirt or gravel was inside the cut, so we came back to Beijing to have it looked at. The good news is that the wound needed nothing more than a good irrigation and a few stitches. The bad news is that I’m not allowed to sweat for the next 24 hours, to give the cut a chance to close before I start pouring my own salt and dirt into it. That means tomorrow is another day off, the fifth day in a row we’ve made no substantial progress and the eleventh in the past 16 days.

Tomorrow afternoon we’ll head back to Zunhua, and the day after – if fortune smiles on us – we’ll try to string together two consecutive hours of hiking. Wish us luck – if you don’t see another cranky post from us, you’ll know we’re back on our way.