Walking the Wall

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

Wohu Mountain – silhouetted watchtowers can be seen on the peaks

It’s been almost a year since we posted our first and only Legend of the Wall. We’d intended to collect legends from the interpretive signs at historical sites along the wall and republish them here, but as it turns out, there aren’t many interpretive signs at developed Great Wall sites. However, we finally found a second legend at the Gubeikou Great Wall north of Beijing, where there are quite a few interesting, though poorly maintained, signs.

The story is entitled “The Jinni of Mr Cai Appeared,” which is probably better translated as “The Ghost of Mr Cai.” It appears below as an extended block quote. We’ve reworked it some, as the English version of the story is obscure for those not experienced in reading Chinglish, but we haven’t changed any important details.

Before reading the story, you need to know two things for it to make any sense at all.

First, the Liao and Song dynasties were rival dynasties from 907 to 1125 AD. The Song were ethnically Chinese and occupied most of China south of the Yellow River. The Liao were Khitans, a nomadic people from the north, and though they ruled portions of northern China they were not Chinese.

Second, the General Cai who appears in the story is a figure who, according to legend, was put to death by order of the Emperor, after Cai’s palace rivals accused him of spending too much on the construction of the Great Wall at Huanghuacheng. Later, the Emperor discovered that the section built by General Cai was exceptionally firm, and built an honorary tomb to atone for his mistake in executing the general.

Here’s the legend.

The Jinni of Mr Cai Appeared

In the time of the Liao and Song dynasties, Han Chang, the commander-in-chief of the Liao state, was always looking for a chance to invade Song territory and expand the boundaries of the Liao.

One rainy June, Han Chang led his forces through the drizzle southward toward the North China plain. When the invaders reached the Wohu Mountain Great Wall, they could see no one, but all around they could hear the sounds of drums beating and the howl of soldiers. Han Chang looked up to the mountain, and suddenly, like a shooting star, he could see torches gyrating wildly all over the hills. Han Chang was so frightened he sent an adjutant bearing surrender papers to the mountain, but when the adjutant arrived, there was nothing there but the Great Wall.

Han Chang was gladdened, and again he sent forces to the foot of Woho Mountain. But like last time, drums began beating and torches appeared on the hillside, and Han Chang was forced to retreat.

This time when Han Chang’s adjutant ascended the mountain to surrender, he came upon an old man with a black and white moustache, sitting in his thatched hut drinking wine and holding a pair of chopsticks. The old man shouted:

“Listen, the one who besieged you was none other than the venerable General Cai, the Emperor of the Great Wall, who was unjustly put to death. Tell Han Chang that he cannot possibly escape, even if he has supernatural abilities!”

The old man then disappeared.

Upon hearing his adjutant’s report, Han Chang immediately understood that the drums, torches and howling had all been the work of the ghost of General Cai.

If the story strikes you as strange, don’t worry – we still think most Chinese stories are strange. But there are some pretty great things about this story as well.

Like any good legend, it completely mixes up time and place. The villain of the story, Han Chang, is from the Liao dynasty, which ended over 300 years before the Ming Great Wall was constructed. The hero, the ghost of General Cai, was reputed to have built the Huanghuacheng Wall, and as far as we know has no connection with the Gubeikou Wall.

But the story also touches on some important historically based truths: the wall’s main purpose was, of course, to repel nomadic invaders from the north, and its construction, far from being uncontroversial, was a source of palace intrigue for centuries.

And finally, like many good legends, this story may tell a tale that its author (or authors) did not intend. According to some Great Wall scholars, the wall was not a terribly rational defence strategy, and could be even considered a form of military wishful thinking – a sort of Ming Dynasty “Build it and they won’t come” fantasy. In the story, the wall plays a similar magical role, protecting the Chinese Song from the nomadic Liao without even the need for human soldiers.

Things of stone and wood?

The latest mystery to bewilder us on our Great Wall journey – apart from old standbys like “Can anything else happen to delay us?” “When are we getting there?” and “Whose idea was this in the first place?” – comes from the field of natural history.

The question came up as we were walking in a valley near the village of Shentangyu. The day before we’d been forced off the wall by a cliff we couldn’t get around, and were taking a farmers’ trail through some orchards on what we hoped would be (and mercifully, unusually was) a short detour back to our planned route.

As we were walking, we started to notice that whenever our walking sticks hit the “rocks” below, they made a soft thud rather than the usual annoying clacking sound.

“Does this feel like stone to you?” Brendan asked as he tapped the ground with my walking pole.

I did the same. The ground looked like stone but actually felt soft. When we tapped on it with our sticks, it crumbled easily, like a wet log.

We walked up a bit further, tapping at the ground.

“I don’t think this is stone,” Brendan said. “It’s soft all the way up here (tap tap), and here (tap), and here (tap).”

We began to think that what we were standing on was not rock, or not entirely rock, but what seemed to be the remains of an enormous – and I mean enormous – tree. And not just one, but all over this orchard we noticed these “trees.”

Conducting an examination

You can get a sense of the scale by comparing the log to the full-sized tree in the background

There was no sign of branches or roots on the trees, but then they were clearly very, very old and the smaller limbs had probably just rotted away. In other respects they looked just like fallen, hollowed out logs. They were rounded, had probably been four or five metres in diametre when whole, and were long and straight. The logs had a clearly distinguishable grain, and in most places their texture was soft and crumbly, like rotting wood.

This log was quite soft

The fluting and rounded edges of this piece reminded me of old redwood logs in Northern California

But as we looked further, we saw that in other places the logs were more like stones, hard and resistant to crumbling. With the assistance of our trusty Unsolved Mysteries magnifying glass, we could see that at least parts of our logs had mineralised, i.e. they were most definitely rocks.

This piece has broken apart in a very rockish way

The white portion is definitely mineral

As we found more and more of these odd rockish logs and treeish stones, we came to the conclusion that what we were looking at were neither rotting logs nor petrified trees, but an ancient forest that was actually in the process of petrifying.

Here the wood grain is distinct, but you can also see what look like flecks of rock

This piece defies categorisation, by us at least

Unfortunately, neither of us has any geological, botanical or paleontological training, and we both have a penchant for making things up, or at least coming up with glamourous theories for our little humdrum discoveries. So we don’t really know if we found a petrifying forest, or just have overactive imaginations. We did a little internet research, and though we did find that there are several geological parks in the area featuring petrified wood, we weren’t able to find anything that would let us know what we’d seen.

If you have any geological expertise, or know someone who does, have a look at these photos or put us in touch with your rockhound friends. If we can’t find someone who can tell us whether we were looking at wood or stone, or both, whether we’ve found an ancient petrifying forest will have to remain another Unsolved Mystery of the Great Wall.

We’d like to thank everyone who has helped us with the other mysteries we’ve published, and particularly those who left enjoyable and insightful comments on our post on The Valley of a Hundred Fengsui. Simon, it was great to hear a perspective from someone with a military background, and your suggestions strike us as quite likely – we’ve read of wall in the eastern brick portion being designed to create interlocking fields of fire, so that would seem logical in the west as well; and yes , the valley is an important thruway to Datong. Jim, to hear from you is a welcome blast from the past for me (Brendan), and thanks for an interesting parallel from North America. Marg, welcome aboard, and we have read that particular numbers of signals sent from individual towers could indicate approaching troop strength, so it seems quite possible that signals from multiple towers could perform a similar function.

Looks like we’ll have to get those fridge magnets made up!

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.

No, no, no, silly, we’re not leaving the wall and going back to Australia.

However, it has become clear that we are completely, utterly, hopelessly and helplessly incapable of making an accurate judgement of when we will reach Shanhaiguan. We’ve tried. And failed. And tried again. Failed again. Tried a third, fourth and fifth time. You get the picture.

We give up. We surrender. We’re waving the white flag. We’re not going to try to predict our finish date any more.

The latest episode in our little scheduling drama came just yesterday, when we headed back to the wall under grey skies from a day off in the city of Zunhua, about 150 kilometres east of Beijing. The forecast was not overly promising – showers throughout the day – but we still had some hope of making it to Shanhaiguan by mid-June to meet our parents, so we decided to push ahead, rain or shine.

It began sprinkling within five minutes after we started up the hill, and within an hour we were walking through wind-driven drizzle. As we slipped up and down stones and got lashed by the wet tangle of thorns and brambles that cover the wall, we began to think that maybe walking along a narrow, crumbling five-metre high soaking-wet stone wall was not the most brilliant thing to be doing under the conditions. So we headed to the nearest watchtower to wait until the rain let up. Which didn’t happen all day long.

Drying our rain gear

By morning the rain had stopped, but it had been replaced by fog. Not great weather, but we figured at least we would have decent footing. So we set out from the watchtower and followed the wall through the mist. Until it disappeared into a chestnut orchard.

Normally this wouldn’t have caused much concern – the wall disappears for short stretches and reappears all the time. But usually we can see more than ten metres in front of us. And in the highly dissected terrain we were in using the crude maps we use, it’s not really practical to navigate using map and compass without having some visual targets to shoot for. So, after spending about an hour trying to find the wall again without success, we packed it in and headed back to Zunhua, where we are now, for our third day off in a row. When you add that to five days lost last week to flu (both of us, consecutively rather than simultaneously, natch), well, it adds up.

This morning’s pea soup

We are genuinely a little down about this, because it’s not going to be possible for us to meet our parents at the end. But for the sake of our safety and our sanity, we have to be realistic about the pace we can maintain, and we simply can’t maintain a pace that will allow that to happen. We will take a week off to spend time with our parents, of course – both sets will be here in less than two weeks – and being able to spend time with them was always most the important thing anyway.

And we’ll get to Shanhaiguan the day we get there, no sooner, no later.

Well, I’ve finally got around to posting the Western Hebei trip stats. The post is a bit out of order and should have gone up just before the Badaling post (our first post from Beijing municipality), but I delayed it because I was trying to get our maps to work before posting it. Had to give up on the maps – Google Maps file size limits are too small and unpredictable to display our maps consistently.

At any rate, we continued our good progress in Western Hebei, covering almost 320 kilometres in just 17 days (including breaks). If we’d hiked like that all the way, we could have completed this trip in six or seven months!

As in Shanxi, we did most of our hiking in Western Hebei on the wall, with about 240 kilometres on and only 75 off, most of those latter coming in our last three days in the province as we approached Beijing municipality. Also as in Shanxi, the terrain continued to be steep: our average gradient was over 12%.

Western Hebei Province

Days in the province: 18
Days spent walking: 14
Days spent resting, sightseeing, wasting time: 4

Location at Western Hebei’s’s western border: 39° 01’ 36.08” N, 111° 03’ 48.21″ E
Location at Western Hebei’s eastern border: 40° 39’ 31.53” N, 116° 09’ 04.48″ E

Kilometres walked: 317.621
Average daily distance (walking days only): 22.687

Kilometres walked on the wall: 243.012
Kilometres walked off the wall: 74.609

Elevation at Western Hebei’s western border: 1097
Elevation at Shanxi’s eastern border: 625

Maximum elevation: 1942
Minimum elevation: 608

Total ascent: 19,042
Total descent: 19,477
Average gradient: 12.143%

Trip Totals to Western Hebei’s Eastern Border

Total days: 227
Days walked: 153
Days spent resting, sightseeing, wasting time: 74

Location at trip’s beginning: 37° 21’ 58.56” N, 104° 12’ 21.45″ E
Location at Western Hebei’s eastern border: 40° 39’ 31.53” N, 116° 09’ 04.48″ E

Kilometres walked: 2939.399
Average daily distance (walking days only): 19.212

Kilometres walked on the wall: 1791.965
Kilometres walked off the wall: 1147.434

Elevation at trip’s beginning: 1735
Elevation at Western Hebei’s eastern border: 625

Maximum elevation: 2504
Minimum elevation: 625

Total ascent: 84,382
Total descent: 85,135
Average gradient: 5.767%

Jiankou Cliffs is the steepest, most vertiginous, most dangerous section of the entire Great Wall of China. But would we at Walking the Wall let a few sheer hundred-metre dropoffs stop us?

Well, yeah.

But let’s back up a few steps. We set out the morning after we hiked the Beijing Knot with every intention of conquering, besting – in fact, utterly humiliating – the Jiankou Great Wall. We’d heard some dark rumours that it was “not possible” to get over the cliffs, but we treated these rumours like most advice we receive that contradicts whatever we hope for and scoffed at them. Besides, the hikers we spoke with who seemed most knowledgeable about the area – mostly experienced Chinese hikers from Beijing – all assured us that it could be done, though it would be very difficult with packs, they said.

Emma (the blue and orange dot toward the top) making her way around one of the “easy” bits

We did progress quite nicely for a while. Emma faced down her fear of heights and scrambled up some crumbly slopes. I managed to swing my stubby legs over stairsteps designed for giants (with child-sized boots).

What, me worry?

Where’s the escalator?

And so we made our way forward, slowly but determined to have a go. That is, until we reached this:

The steep part is where it turns to the right

At the turn shown above, the unbelievably steep staircases gave way to rocks cemented together in a nearly vertical wall that was impossible to ascend without the use of all four limbs. Now, we have a sort of safety rule pertaining to cliffs, boulders and other obstacles of the vertical persuasion: if we have to use our hands for much more than stabilisation or the odd short scramble, we turn around. In other words, no rock climbing.

And just where is that rule written?

As you can see, I did bend our rule a bit – without pack – to see if there was any way we could manage what was ahead. Though I got past the scary climbing section and beyond – enough to ascertain that it is definitely possible to go all the way to the next section, Mutianyu – it was also pretty apparent that to climb the Jiankou cliffs wearing 20-kilogram packs would be to take on a bit more risk than we care to. In the end we headed back to the valley, taking a five kilometre detour to rejoin the wall, a few hundred metres further than where we left it and well beyond the cliffs.

The view as we walked back toward the Beijing Knot, tails between legs

When we finally hit the Beijing wall, it was like walking into a Great Wall calendar. Behind us, to the west, lay the outer wall; to the south, the Huanghuacheng inner wall; and ahead of us, reclining majestically on the ridgetop, the Beijing wall. The three of them meet at a place called the Beijing Knot, high atop the needle-sharp Huoshi Mountain, and it was that view that we were treated to as we set up camp near the Nine Window Watchtower.

The Beijing Knot is on the peak to the right

Many of the towers and entrances are overgrown with trees and shrubs

And in some parts, even the wall

The Beijing Knot, or Beijing Jie in Chinese, marks the western boundary of the horseshoe-shaped wall that loops around the north of Beijing.

Making our way towards the Knot, visible in the distance

It is this wall that most tourists visit when they come to China, and it is here that you will find the classic “wall” images – stone, brick, watchtowers, windows, crenellations. For thousands of kilometres we had seen hints of these here and there, but Beijing is where they all come together.

The view through one of the windows in the Nine Window Watchtower

Stones form the base of the wall and the towers while the top is made of brick

A horsewalk is where the wall is wide enough for at least two horses at a time

Brick crenellations going up a sloping wall

This was probably one of our favourite days on the wall. Though far from our first day in Beijing municipality, the “mini-province” that encloses Beijing, this was our first day in what you would call “recognisable” Beijing wall. It was exciting to finally see, after nearly a year, the wall that we had envisioned when we thought of this journey.

The holes at the top were used to send arrows or rocks at the enemy

There we were, walking along wall wide enough for two horses, enclosed on both sides, beautifully decorated arrow loops and rock holes still intact, and we couldn’t go two paces without stopping to take a photo.

Brick wall with a watchtower in the distance