Great Wall / Great Trip

I was originally scheduled to fly out of China the day after the Olympics ended, but when it became clear I wasn't going to have time to do a Great Wall trip, I knew I'd have to push it back, if possible. Fortunately, there was a spot on the flight the same daily flight the next day, so now I wouldn't have to kick myself for getting to China and not seeing the Wall.




Scott, Larry and I left the media village the morning after the closing ceremonies and went to the swanky Ritz-Carlton on the other side of Beijing. There, they had a half-day package to the Great Wall at Mutianyu where you get a tour guide, a van, a driver and passes for the lift to the top of the wall, all for 1800 RMB, or about $260 between the three of us.



As is common practice with these tours, they throw in a side stop along the way. Ours was at a plant where they did hand-made Chinese vases, urns, artwork, etc.. You get a quick tour through the shop where you see the process (above) and then there's the requisite gift shop at the end. Seems like it's a pretty standard practice at a lot of places. Since I'm a cheapo, I didn't buy anything...

Outside the factory was one of the many basketball hoops we saw during our trip. It's become one of the most popular sports in China with Yao Ming as the hometown hero, but also with the NBA being a HUGE draw. Kobe is a god here.

I was drawn to the lions alongside this beat up old hoop.

After about a 1 1/2-hour drive from our hotel, we get to the mountains and the base area for the Great Wall at Mutianyu, one of the seven sections that's open to the public. There's one a bit closer to Beijing called Badaling, but we're told this is better and less crowded. It's still quite popular and there's a lot going on at the bottom.

After getting out of the parking lot, we start walking up to the ski lift that will get us to the Wall itself. In doing so, we have to run a gauntlet of little shops where locals aggressively try to sell their wares, much of it the same, and as our guide warned us, most of it lousy quality..

After hopping in the cable car for a hot ride to the top that took a couple minutes, we were greeted by a pretty awe-inspiring sight..

Scott, Larry and I at the top.. The Wall itself stretched over 4,000 miles, just an unbelievable project that took millions of labors. Much of it is in disrepair now, but the seven sections open to the public have been restored and kept up. In other areas, it's been taken down or local villages have taken the stone to use for houses.

Our guide also told us they also say the Wall is the biggest cemetery in the world since millions of laborers who helped build it and died during its construction were also buried right in it...

Walking the wall is definitely not an easy stroll. It goes up....

And it goes down...

We walked just under a mile from Tower 14 over to Tower 6 and it was a pretty taxing hike.

There are A LOT of steps, many of them pretty narrow, so you have to walk a little bit sideways and all the stabilizing muscles in your legs are working constantly. We didn't even realize it at first, but then when we'd stop, our leg muscles would be shaking and spasming. It was definitely a good workout. Larry didn't come our direction, which was the more difficult route. He headed off to the left when we got to the top and took a more leisurely climb.

The wall itself is pretty big, well over 30 feet in places. And it's on the top spine of the mountain, so it's very imposing..

Here's a section with the steps heading down fairly steeply.. The legs aren't burning at this point..

Although it was hazy, it was still pretty hot on the Wall, so the towers made for a nice little respite. Cool and shaded, they invariably had some local who was set up just inside somewhere with a small cooler of drinks.

You know, when you have a GIANT wall on top of a mountain, how much more protection do you need, really? So we just let him sleep...

This was looking back up from the stretch we just hiked down. The plan, thankfully, was not to go back up and take the cable car back to the base.

Some very ornate carvings on one of the towers.. And of course the requisite grafitti from tourists..

And here's the plan to get back down.. At tower 6, there's a luge track. A metal chute that will take you all the way back to the bottom. There was really no question I was going to do this.

How could you not be convinced to take a toboggan down from the top of the Great Wall??

Simply had to be done.

You'd climb in the toboggan-like thing and there's a lever in between your legs. Push forward, you go faster, pull back and it slows down. Of course there's a lot of people going down, but there's a reasonable spacing and you just had to hope that you didn't get some slowpoke clogging the the way.

The run itself took about 5 minutes, which was pretty cool. I took some video on the way down, so have that to remember the fun... You could really gain some serious speed if the track was clear (and probably fly right off the sides), but there were too many other people to really open it up and the workers would be stationed at various curves in the course to yell at you when to slow down or pick it up. Was a good time. I made the run down, then stopped to have an ice cream at one of the shops and took the seperate chair lift back up to Tower 6 just so I could take the toboggan ride back down again.

Just an awesome experience all around. Needless to say, I'm extremely glad I moved my flight back a day so I wouldn't miss this..