staggering
by Rach
Beijing, China
Badaling is apparently where most people view The Great Wall from. We went in the opposite direction to a less-populous more run-down section, one with the promise of a ten kilometre walk.
And we got scammed.
We had to take a bus from the Dongzhimen long distance bus station, a mere two centimetres on our map. You’d think we’d have learnt by now that tourist maps are not drawn to scale. But it would seem we haven’t – we believed the distance to be just on a kilometre. Triple it for reality’s sake and remember we are planning another ten after the bus ride. Actually, we knew we had to take a 10-yuan-bus and then change to a 7-yuan-van partway, but we figured we could manage that. Even with the extra 3km.
At the bus station I remind myself we are not in Cambodia or Vietnam as an overly helpful lady herds us towards a queue and points out that there are no longer vans and we’ll need to take a taxi. I calm the cynical voice in my head, which is wondering how she even knew we were planning on the van option, and we shake her off; we’re not going to be taken for a ride!
On board the conductor speaks good enough English until we ask for half fares for the children. At this point her ability disintegrates, she cannot understand anything we’re saying and insists on ten full fares of 15 yuan. What choice do you have? She also tells us “no van”. Again I wonder why and how.
I’m none too surprised an hour and a half later when we are dropped off on the outskirts of town. Driver and conductor insist we must change here for our onward trip. What choice do you have?
*Amazingly* (sigh, wink, co-incidentally, whatever) some unofficial taxi drivers are lined up waiting to offer their services.
450 yuan per car, and we’ll need two cars. So beginneth our longest haggling episode to date, one that involves us walking over a kilometre up the road with drivers running after us and then coming after us in their cars. Do you want all the details of how it went? No, I didn’t think so – but the audacity of this crowd was staggering! Our walk-away-looking-resolute staunchness won out and we settled on a “go and come back” for all of us in one van for a mere 100 yuan each way. Seemed fair enough, and a great deal better than powerlessly continuing our walk up a road that we didn’t know towards a place we didn’t know, not having any idea how to get where we wanted to go and certainly not a clue about how to return to Beijing at the end of the walk! Agreement reached, driver turned very friendly and offered Rob the obligatory cigarette!
Needless to say, all this took Quite Some Time and we did not reach the wall until after 2pm. We had to be at the other end of 10km by 5:30pm in order to make the last bus home. The walk is supposed to take four hours. Driver pointed out our predicament and suggested we take the cable car, but at another 30 yuan each on top of the already-paid 50 yuan entrance fee we decided to walk fast. That was all very well until we got to the wall. Staggering. Steep. Monumental. Amazing. Breathtaking – quite literally. Running was out of the question. Snapping pictures on the hoof, because we did want at least a couple of shots to remember the day by, we hoped we would make it and urged the children onwards and upwards. An entourage of friendly bag-filled-with-souvenirs-carrying women attached themselves to us, and when they offered a shortcut from the eighth tower to near the end, we cut our losses and followed in their scrambling downhill footsteps. Actually the diversion turned out to be just as interesting as walking the wall itself, passing through a clump of ancient stone houses with equally ancient inhabitants tending animals and fields, chickens scratching in the dirt, corn cobs lying on the ground, mountains rising up on either side.
We lost our guides partway along the path due to our refusal to buy books or chopsticks or a too-small lime green t-shirt or staggeringly-priced postcards, but we trudged on. When we rejoined the wall and looked back we realised how prudent it had been to follow these angels – people were clambering carefully, picking their route with caution over the easily-dislodge-able stones; others had jumped right off the wall and were walking alongside it. An adventure it would have been, if we had had enough time, but we would never have made it back to Beijing in the timeframe we had been left with.
Back on the wall, a man runs after us and demands another 40 yuan fee. We’re in a new district and we need to pay again. What choice do you have? Actually, we try showing our tickets, insisting that we have already paid and walking off, but Mr Money Collector gets very agitated and so out comes the wallet and is all but emptied. This is turning into a very expensive day. And we have yet to pay another 5 yuan to cross a swing bridge!
Along we walk, up stairs that require magnificent effort to mount, down again, all the while tracking with our eyes the manmade snake winding its way along the ridge. It is staggering. A hardly-believable feat of man. Unlike the writer of a China Daily article we read last week, we are awed by the structure. We do not come away indifferent to it. We do not find it to be uninspiring, merely a long collection of rocks. Perhaps she was not adrenaline-rushing along, wondering what would happen if she was left with eight children and an elderly gentleman on a freezing mountaintop for the night, perhaps she was not there at day’s end as the sun spread its orange hue over the barren hills….who knows? We sure were in awe.
Here’s what Jgirl14’s journal reveals:
Sometimes when you’ve read about a certain place or famous landmark and seen pictures and heard people talking about “it”, you raise your hopes and expectations. Then you get your own firsthand experience with whatever it is and you’re a little disappointed, because it wasn’t as amazing or as big or as good as the picture in your mind. I’m glad to be able to say this wasn’t the case with The Great Wall. It was everything I’d hoped it would be, and surprisingly, exceeded my expectations!
“Seeing is believing” they say, and until I saw the wall snaking along the ridge, twisting this way and that, I thought those paintings that show the wall curving along were a slight exaggeration, but it’s true! As for the watchtowers…..WAY more than I’d anticipated. In 10km there were 30 or so. Only once we were standing there, Mongolia on one side and China on the other with the wall in between, did it sink in that this was THE Great Wall.
As if this wasn’t enough of a good thing for one day….on the trip home we saw a river iced over and a dusting of snow on a patch of ground!
Quite exciting.
As Grandpa said, “It was totally worth it!”
Tags: children, postcard: China, postcard: Mongolia, recreation, weather
rayres
totally worth it it was but Rach must have asked me what I thought about it a few hours after we finished – my recovery took at least that long!
I was going to post my owbn blog – and I may yet do so, but these pics and J girls comments say it all.
As for the effort p for those tthat have ridden the Taupo bike race, this was blike a couple of dozen Hatepe Hills all strung together! Awesome!
Wow what an adventure!
Anybody thinking of attempting to walk the whole wall someday??! 😀
May, you read my mind! Although at 7200km, it may be a little ambitious!