Another brick in the Wall

One of the first things I did after coming to China was visit the Great Wall. Like most tourists, we went to the section of the wall called Badaling (八达岭). As you can see if you look at my old post, it was pretty crowded there and pretty commercialized. So this year when my sister and nephew came to visit, I wanted to show them something different – as well as giving myself a new experience instead of a repeat.

In my guide book, Simatai (司马台) was described as being less visited, less restored, and less crowded, which fit the bill perfectly. Of course, being all those things, it’s a little more of a challenge to get there. Luckily, I have some good friends who are locals and willing to help out. One of my friends told me that she saw a tour bus in the neighborhood, near the Sanlitun Youth Hostel, that said Bus to Jinshanling and Simatai the Great Wall on its side. She even wrote down the phone number on the bus. It turned out I had to arrange the trip through the youth hostel – the tour company won’t take bookings directly. So I went into the hostel and handed over a bunch of cash, signing up for the next morning (April 10).

We had to be there at 6:30, and the tour included breakfast on the road and a buffet lunch. All for Ұ260 (about US$38) per person, and actual entry tickets to the Great Wall were not included.

The “breakfast” was a pretty unappealing sandwich with some sweetened fruit juice. Really wish I’d taken the time to eat something beforehand. The bus ride was a total of about two and a half hours, with a stop at Miyun (密云) for gas, beverages and snacks – though the gas station had a pretty pitiful selection. I got a bottled coffee drink to wake myself up.

Miyun is a town in the Beijing Municipality and sees itself as the gateway to the Great Wall, so they use its image to decorate the town.
That’s a roundabout in the middle of town, not the real Wall.

After Miyun we headed into higher country.
We passed a little way into Hebei (河北) Province to a place called Jinshanling (金山岭), which basically means Gold Mountain. There is not gold in these here hills – it gets the name for the color of the trees in fall or something.
This section of the Wall was first built in 1368 and restored in 1567; parts of it have been restored more recently, though as you will see, certainly not all of it. And yes, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The entrance ticket to this area is Ұ50.

The bus dropped us off here, and the guide gave us instructions on how to manage the ten kilometer walk to Simatai, where the bus would pick us up in about four and a half hours. No pressure.
The day was clear but hazy, so visibility was pretty good although the sky was generally not blue.
Note the relative – nay, complete – lack of tourists. This particular bit is obviously restored and in very good shape.
The start of the journey features some climbs which seemed a bit steep at the time. Little did we know what lay ahead of us.

As you go along, the state of the Wall deteriorates.
Note that the next guard tower in line is pretty far gone.
And past that is a section that you can barely walk on.
Note the lovely trees in bloom – I’m pretty sure they’re cherries. It was springtime, and things were starting to look alive.
The trend of steeper and more deteriorated continued.
Not long past this point there was a sign to inform us that we were entering the Simatai section of the Great Wall. This area costs Ұ40 to get in. There was a sign that said it was the ticket office of Simatai Great Wall, but there was no one there. At one point a woman was just walking along and checking our tickets.

There was a rather inconspicuous arrow pointing us around this tower.
Seems obvious that the path does not go through it, but many people tried, climbing up inside only to find out the other side was even less accessible.
We walked around it.

Here’s a picture that gives you a good idea what Simatai is like.
You can see that parts of the Wall are only a few feet high along here. And look at the ridge in the distance. See how the Wall continues up it?
That’s an area where it’s not very high.

As you walk along, you can see that aside from tourism, the local economy also includes agriculture.
Those are terraced corn fields. All along the Wall, we met up with locals trying to supplement their income by selling water, cola, beer, postcards, or guidebooks or (for the ones that spoke more English) offering their services as guides.

Between where the previous pictures were taken and the steep ridge in the distance is a river.
You have to cross a narrow suspension bridge (for an extra Ұ5) to cross it – not that you have a choice.
It’s a pretty steep descent to the bridge.
That’s another Great Wall ticket office. There’s actually a guy sitting on a folding chair at the other side. And that’s my sister and nephew not being exhausted.

From the other side looking back:
There’s a big sign near the Simatai parking lot to introduce the area. “Simatai Great Wall is most famous for its five characteristics: precipitous, dense, ingenious, peculiar and comprehensive...it is the only section that still keeps the original appearance of the Ming-dynasty Great Wall.” It also describes the “rope bridge” as looking like a “magnificent rainbow” – sure.

As tour members straggled in at Simatai, a minibus took them to a nearby restaurant for a buffet lunch. As it was after 2:00 and we’d had virtually nothing for breakfast and had just hiked 10k over rough terrain, to say we were starving would be an understatement. The food was tolerable, a selection of the most common Chinese dishes: gongbaojiding (kung pao chicken), tomatoes with scrambled eggs, and so on with steamed rice. Beverages were extra.

Outside the restaurant, there were ears of corn hanging on trees to dry. Though given that it was only April, this must be last year’s crop.
The trip back into Beijing took a lot longer than the trip out. Why? You might ask. Here’s why:
A bit after we passed the airport, we hit rush hour traffic. It was like this for something like two hours covering what should have taken 30 minutes or so.

I’m worn out now just from writing about it. But what a day!

Running up that hill

West of Beijing’s flat expanse rise some prominent hills. The Summer Palace is close to their base, and you can see them in some of my pictures from there.

(from April 2007)

Given the city’s long history and the significant portion of it when it was an imperial capital, it’s not surprising that emperors took an interest in these hills. Beijing’s climate is notoriously unpleasant at many times of the year, which encourages those with the means to get out of town. Add to that the fact that it’s really pretty up there, and you can bet the rulers appropriated big chunks of it for their personal use.

The park today called Xiangshan (Fragrant Hills) is one of those chunks. According to the brochure, it dates back to the Jin Dynasty in 1186. It has served as a royal resort for summer hunting and other activities for other subsequent dynasties based here. The famous emperor Qianlong ordered much expansion and building in 1745. And like many ancient things here, it’s had a variety of different names through the ages.

As with the Old Summer Palace, much damage was done to Xiangshan by English and French armies in 1860 and by the allies of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. It was opened as a public park in the 50s, and much of the destruction has been restored.

It’s quite a distance from the center of town. Taking the subway to the closest point still leaves you a bus ride of an hour or so.
The second bus is the one to Xiangshan, and almost all of the people were waiting for it. Note that although it appears warm, the sky is a uniform color that is not blue.
This is the park entrance, with the titular hills behind it. The highest one, on the right, is where I’m headed. Beijing’s elevation is 143 feet, and the top is at 1827.
This is half of Yanjing Hu (Spectacle Lake – spectacle as in eyeglasses) with a little artificial waterfall. From near here, there is a cable car to take you to the summit, but that’s for wimps, and I’m not a wimp.
If I remember right, this is the front of an old monastery (this part of the brochure is only in Chinese, and not any characters I know). I think it was built by the emperor for when the Lama visited from Tibet. I like the tree growing out of the wall.
This is Liulita (Glazed Tile Pagoda, pronounced oddly like “Lolita”), which managed to survive the destruction while most everything else went down.
From there on, it gets kind of steep. This is one tiny fraction of what seemed like an endless stairway. By this point I was starting to wonder if the cable car might have been a better choice. But imagine the feeling of accomplishment that lies ahead!
Yes, that’s the top way up there. Would it take longer to go back down and catch a ride?
There is even some wildlife to be seen.
Very near the summit now, seriously out of breath and thankful for the extra bottle of water I bought from a lady a few hundred meters below. Notice how people react to a sign that says Dangerous! No coming close! And no, that is not the Great Wall in the background, just an old park boundary fence.
This is the top. Finally made it. My legs were on fire, but I can now count myself among those elite few who have done the climb. All ten million or so of us.
You’ll have to take my word for it that Beijing is down there. The air at this height is actually pretty good, and we were in bright sunlight. The “haze” was so diffuse that you couldn’t see it in a layer from this height.

After a lengthy breather, it was time to head back down, which involves a somewhat different set of leg muscles. Equal opportunity aches, you could say.
It’s quite a pleasant spot for a picnic or just relaxing. The park is most famous for its fall colors, with a number of different species of trees contributing. I’ve heard it can be extremely crowded at that time of year. But it’s pretty nice in early summer as well.

As you can tell, when I went up this hill, I was not running, but I couldn’t resist a Kate Bush reference for the title. But I am not a wimp.

For some shots of Xiangshan on a clearer day, check out this page. Just my luck, the day after I went was clear and blue, at least in the morning – thunderstorm at night.

That’s a really great wall

After a night of on-and-off sleeping, I got up around 8 and started getting ready for a day of being a tourist. In my email was a copy of a Wall Street Journal article about Ticketmaster’s entry into China. Now the world knows what we’re up to. One thing I found interesting was the statement about how after we did ticketing for the last summer games in Athens, we closed up shop in Greece and went home, because after the Olympics there were not enough venues with enough events to sustain our kind of business. But here in Beijing, the government is very keen to keep using all these facilities they’re building for years to come, giving us a potential market of hundreds of millions of customers (counting only the growing middle class as they did in the article).

As I write this, I’m killing time waiting for D to come online on Skype. We’re hoping this nifty free software will help us keep in touch, along with all the emails we’ve been exchanging. For some of my other friends I’ve been using Trillian, chatting mostly on AIM. KW was talking at dinner lat night about how they got a webcam to use with Skype.

Later.

It’s a drive of a bit over an hour to get to Badaling, a very popular section of the Great Wall near Beijing. The city itself sits in a large flat valley, with mountains rising suddenly up to the north. A nice modern freeway goes all the way out to Badaling, and beyond.

There’s a big fancy gate here, and the driver dropped us off just outside of it. Given its proximity to the city, it’s a very popular tourist destination, very crowded, especially on a day as lovely as this one. I’ve probably mentioned before that the sky here is almost never blue. A normal day is grayish-tan above, and hazy below, and buildings ten blocks away can be hard to see. The weather today was absolutely stunning.

Entrance costs a reasonable 45RMB (something like $7.25). We skipped the museum and headed straight for the wall. This section dates from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) and has been restored within the last thirty years. We also skipped the cable car, opting to do things the old fashioned way.

It was especially crowded up one side from the entrance, so we turned the other way, where fewer people went. As you can see, the terrain is quite rugged, and the Wall follows it up and down, resulting in some very steep hiking.

Did I say “hiking”? Climbing might be more accurate. At some places, the walkway at the top goes from smooth stone to steps, and even to what is nearly a ladder.

We were making our way to a particular tower we could see from the entrance. It looked like a good place to get a high vantage, which it was, but getting there was quite the cardio workout. I’m sure our leg muscles will be sore the next few days. This might have something to do with why this section was less crowded.

At the guard tower, the view was a good as we expected. We continued just a little past it to get a good view beyond. With binoculars, we could see sections ahead that didn’t seem to be open to the public, and had not yet been restored.

Among the many interesting sights were impractical footwear choices.

After all that walking and climbing, we were quite ready for chairs, food, and beverages. We picked one of a number of restaurants outside the gate and had a tolerable meal indifferently served. But it included three big (600ml!) bottles of Tsingtao as compensation.

We called for the driver, and headed back for the city. Along the way we passed the building that will house our permanent office. It will be the new home of some parts of the Gehua conglomerate (if that’s the right word), and as Gehua is part of our joint venture, we get part of the fifth floor of the G-Box, nicknamed for obvious reasons. It will be a welcome step up from the Huabei building where we are now.

That was quite an afternoon. It’s hard to imagine how remote the Great Wall was to visitors from the West who came to China in the early 20^th Century, before the Revolution, and how accessible it is now.

From the hotel, I walked over to the Wonderful Digital Jungle and bought a USB card reader for the camera’s compact flash cards for 50RMB ($8), then stopped in at 7-11 for something to drink. I picked out a bottle that looked like tea, and was happy to discover it was unsweetened. So many of the drinks I’ve had here were very sugary. Still full from lunch, I’ve opted for just a little snack instead of a full meal.

Oddly enough, while I can post to this journal, I can’t look at the completed pages. It seems that all blogspot.com addresses are inaccessible from here. Maybe some other blogger here wrote something the government did not approve of, and they’ve blocked it. Or maybe it’s some technical glitch. In any case, I click the Publish button and hope for the best.