There’s a WALL there.
Yep, a really long one. At its longest, the Great Wall was 8,851 km in length. That is 5,500 miles, which is about how many miles you’d need to drive from Washington DC to Los Angeles and back again.
The wall is amazing. The feeling when I see the scope of the wall and the breathtaking scenery on all sides is practically impossible to describe. It is awesome, as anyone who has been there will tell you. It stretches for as far as the eye can see in both directions, winding through the valleys and cresting the peaks, each guard tower growing slightly smaller in the distance. At one point as I sat and rested while my energetic kids and husband clambered down to 5 more towers, I could count 26 towers. The dramatic rise and fall of the hills 60 miles outside of Beijing add to the majesty of this man-made creation.
History of the wall
Just thinking about the labor involved is exhausting. Historians believe 1/5 of the Chinese population were pressed into service by the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, to build the wall and create his terra cotta warriors and underground burial complex. At another point in history, The Sui dynasty mobilized over a million men to build the wall, with a heavy cost in human lives. Our guide told us many men who died building it were entombed within the walls. You decide whether you’d like to believe that. I do.
What remains today is a very long structure, visible from space. Visitors are only allowed on restored sections of the wall, which in some cases are bolstered by foreign investors. In between the restored sections are miles of crumbling walls and towers. The section we visited in Mutianyu had been restored by a large grant from a German company.
Climbing the wall
To get to the wall, you can either climb 800 or so steps or take the tram up to the base of the wall. We took the tram. Since Beijing had just had a snowstorm 3 days prior, the skies were fairly clear, a blessing. Then, a few steps up to the first tower and off we went. At first, we climbed to the top of every tower on the way, then we grew impatient to get to the ‘top,’ the 14th tower from where we started. Those 455 steps were killers, let me tell you. I heard one other tourist say it was nothing compared to Machu Picchu. Mental note on that one, stair stepper to prep for Machu Picchu.
Once we reached the top, a bunch of people were milling around taking pictures. The crowds were light since it is November, and officially winter here. An obliging European woman took our family picture, and I returned the favor. What you cannot see in the picture is the annoying guy hawking his cheap souvenirs in Chinese, yelling almost constantly. I thought capitalism was not a thing here!
Time to drink it all in
My best moment on the wall, when I really got to contemplate its majesty and scope—happened as I sat alone on a parapet overlooking the valley, the long stretch of wall dotted with towers continuing into the horizon. I took about 20 pictures, then settled down and drank in the atmosphere, the history, the sacrifice of the Chinese who created this masterpiece.
In many ways, the wall is a memorial to those who worked, slaved and died creating it. On this Thanksgiving Day, I am thankful for their sacrifice and for the opportunity to walk on the Wall.
