'The' Wall

Now I realize that the Great Wall was a really great thing.  All these people spent as much time as it took for the world to begin.  But until you step on the wall and take a look at the mountain ranges surrounding it, you cannot truly say that it is great.  We stayed at this little hostel three hours outside of Beijing.  And by hostel, I mean someone family’s house that we paid to stay at and eat their food.  The family was very simple; they had a house and a farm.  They grew everything they ate—including the meat—except for maybe the rice (because everyone knows rice destroys fields).  The food was simply spectacular, I’ve never felt better in my life after eating.  Okay fine, maybe I was a little too full, but it gave me so much energy.  It was all very traditional and home cooked, extremely tasty. 

 (This was our dinner the night we stayed at the hostel) 

So, moving on.  Obviously the Great Wall is really old, like 7^th century old.  But a lot of places are restored, the spot I’ve heard the most about is called MuTianWu, and is quite touristy.  Word on the street is that there are vendors everywhere and it’s completely restored.  I’ve never been there, at least not yet.  I will be going with my school though.  The section that our little group of BYUI people went to is called JianKou.  And is beautiful, including the landscape and the complete feeling of nature (even though we’re still in a village); also, you can breath there.  After arriving and dropping out stuff, we headed straight up to the Wall.  It was about a 45 minute hike up, and unfortunately, at first it was really foggy.

This part of the wall is still completely in ruins; not a vendor or drink stand to be seen.  But that’s the way we like it, it was like visiting a real historical site, because you know, we actually were.  You have a sense of awe for it.  So due to the fog, and being up on the Great Wall of China, we walked around and explored for a little.  We were able to go into some of the watchtowers and climb on different parts.  Another thing I observed is that when I think of the Great Wall, I usually think of that one part in the Disney movie Mulan.  At the beginning the guard is walking on top of the wall, and the path is incredibly smooth; like you could pull an old fashioned cart over it.  However, that is not the case for this part of the wall.  Something that has constantly remained with me is that the entire Great Wall of China should probably be renamed the Great Wall of Stairs; because that’s all it is. 

                         (In this picture I'm standing                     (Aaron is doing some serious free

                               on a watch tower)                          climbing, don't worry he was being safe)

(This was our view the entire 4 hour morning hike)

Being a hiker is all fun and games until someone falls off the Great Wall… Just kidding, we might have been doing quite a bit of free climbing, but we all got back safe and sound.  This was the first time we went up, and it was around 2pm.  The next morning we left at 5:45am and it was nice and clear.  We spent about 6 hours traveling along the wall and exploring.  It was really cool to walk along the wall, it was kind of like walking through a forest, except there was the side of the wall right next to you.

I almost didn’t want to get up, but I’m so glad I did, going in the morning was definitely a good decision.  We did a lot more exploring and went a lot further, there was so much to see, and an endless amount of guard towers.  If we had more time, we probably would have gone further.  Every time we came to a tower, there would always be another high, bigger, one to get to.  The term, “just one more,” is appropriate here.

(We used our grappling hook skills to get down there)