Laurie and I get up early to go to a part of the Great Wall recommended in the Lonely Planet. Getting onto the first bus we need to get, there is a lady guarding the door shouting stroppily and pointing to a slot where I need to put money in for the fare. It’s a strange system considering it’s a newish looking bus, and the lady irritates me, so I sneakily put one less Yuan in the slot than the due fare as a penalty for her rudeness. Laurie doesn’t seem to have understood the pointing instructions and stops at the door asking the lady, who clearly speaks no English, where to buy tickets...
Four years studying at the Universities of Oregon and of Virginia have left Laurie with a strong tendency to aggressively ask quite stupid questions. She reminds me of old video game characters that were always difficult to control and thus always ended up stuck in corners from which you can’t get the character to turn around and escape from. Eventually you just end up with a broken joy stick.
I have started to collect random Laurie quotes. Today’s is: ‘I have spent a lot of time not thinking recently’.
Getting the second bus from a suburb of Beijing, we are not sure which stop to catch the bus from. We took the precaution of asking Kevin to give us the written Chinese symbols for our destination so that we can ask for directions. We get offered lifts from minibus drivers who want to charge 150 Yuan (£15) to go to the Wall. We knew that we could have paid 100 Yuan from central Beijing for a minibus, so this is easy to turn down. However, we are not sure if the bus we need to catch actually exists, having relied on the LP for the bus routes. When we see a bus coming we ask the minibus drivers if that bus goes to where we need to go, pointing at our bit of paper. They say ‘no, no, no’. We go to the bus to check anyway. It’s a yes, and costs only eight Yuan each.
This bus isn’t carrying any other Great Wall tourists or any non-Chinese though, but we are re-assured when we see a bit of the Great Wall in the distance as we drive along a rural road. When we get off in a village called Zhuangdaokou, there is no instruction of where to go other than one sign in English saying this part of the Wall is open to the public.
We decide to climb a path heading upwards. The path decays as we get higher, and it decays away until we do not know which we to go. We climb up one way, but are stopped by the steepness of the slope and by overgrown vegetation. We eventually find a way up to a part of the Wall that is no longer so great. Not all of the Great Wall is maintained or restored to its past glory, and this part is a crumbled ruin. Having said that, it does mean that we have this part to ourselves and we get a real sense of the history of this great monument.
We walk along the ruin as far as possible before it gets too dangerous. We climb down to a gate that leads to a restored part of the wall. We were not sure whether we would ever get to a point where we had to pay an entrance fee, but we have enough of a view over the opposing valleys to get an idea of the seeming endlessness of The Wall and this part of it is too remote to be worth manning an entrance to collect admissions. I am glad we have come here. We have this almost to ourselves and the view shows just how imposing a military obstacle this would have presented. The most elevated point of our walk, we see into three valleys, and the view is similar to what we would have seen centuries before, except for some factory like buildings in the village and a hydropower station in the opposite valley. The path of The Wall is almost like a puzzle, as it oscillates up and swoops down into more vulnerable crevices in the valleys. It is a strange and inspiring site.
The gate we came through to get onto the restored part of the wall is called the Zhenluguan Gateway, which is translated by a nearby sign as ‘Withering the Enemies Gate’. Here, during the Ming Dynasty, invaders came but decided that there could be hundreds of the Ming armies hidden the pine trees on both sides of the wall, and so they retreated 50km in fear of an onslaught.
Having said all this, with the vastness of the thing leaving much of it unguarded, it is easy to see how ‘The Wall’ became redundant as a military defence quite early in its existence.
In the evening, back in Beijing, Laurie and I meet up with Raven for dinner, who we met on the way to see the Terracotta Warriors Museum near Xian. She has brought along her boyfriend, and they embarrass us with their hospitality. They have given us some artwork, an origami portrait of a bird. We haven’t brought them anything, although they do say that it is their custom to give presents to guests. As we are eating in a restaurant I hadn’t considered them as our hosts, but this is their home town I suppose.
We have gone to a restaurant that specifically serves Peking Duck, as Laurie hadn’t tried it before. Raven and her boyfriend Simon are interesting and jovial company. At one point I invite them to visit me in England whenever they can, although I can tell from their reaction that they don’t expect to be able to do this. Toward the end of the meal, I go out for a cigarette. Smoking is not banned in restaurants in China, but I considered it impolite to smoke at a table on non-smokers. Laurie would have been annoyed at least. While I am out, Simon sneakily pays the bill and refuses to accept any money when I return. These are the first native people I have met so far on my journey that I have formed some sort of friendship with, although I realise it is unlikely we will meet again.
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