Travels through China – 4

When I was a school-going kid, I was in awe of it. At the same time, it used to be a nightmare during the time of exams — What was its length? Who built it, the Mings or the Qings? What was the purpose for which it was built and many more questions. I am talking about the Great Wall of China, a place which was in my bucket-list for years………… and today, I was going to see it. Wow! Was I excited? You bet, I was.

The Great Wall is not a single long wall, but a series of walls, some encircling areas and some of them secondary walls and more important, not necessarily continuous because wherever natural boundaries like rivers were present, there was no wall built. This being so, there is no single date or some specific dates when the Wall was completed. The early Chinese kingdoms had walls surrounding them for protection. When the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang unified these kingdoms into one in 221 BC, he ordered rebuilding of the wall, destructing the ones which were between kingdoms unified and building an outer boundary wall. The Mings who came later, further extended the Wall, Was surprised to learn that the total length of the walls was over 21,000 kilometers. Much of it has been destroyed for buildings and land development while nature too has taken its toll on the walls.In general the walls are built on an east-west direction traversing lofty mountains, forests, deserts( in the west) and right up to the sea in the east. Why was it built?- 1) For defense against the marauders from Mongolia & Manchuria 2) For trade controls on the Silk Road, though this came much later. There was a third reason i.e. Tourism and that was in the twentieth century. Yes, there was no wall-building during the Qings regime and it was under Mao Zhedong in 1957 that renovation/rebuilding of the walls built by the Mings was done and the Badaling Great Wall was open to the public.

Many portions of the Great Wall like Badaling, Jinshanling, Mutianyu, Simatai & Juyongguan all around Beijing under various stages of dilapidation/restoration and different levels of difficulty for tourists in reaching the wall and exploring it. 

Our trip was to the Mutianyu Wall which is among the best restored though Badaling is stated to be more popular. We started off in our van and it was a one hour drive from Beijing, crisscrossing expressways and gradually moving to well-maintained country roads before touching down at Mutianyu. We were ravenously hungry and so first it was lunch at a restaurant ( restaurants are called Farmer houses, do not know why).

Some vegetarian stuff was made available and we tried using chopsticks to pick up the potatoes and cauliflower along with the rice.  On a full stomach, we walked up a steep slope where the ticketing office was. Though the tickets were part of the tour package, the mode of going up to reach the Wall was not. We found three ways to go up and four ways to come down( no, no it was not tumbling down like Jack & Jill)

One can choose to walk/hike up over steps and pathways or take a closed cable car or opt for an open two-seater bucket-lift. Coming down has one more option i.e.tobogganing. True to the Indian ‘jugaad’ mentality, checked if we could use one option for going up and another for coming down. The answer was NO, as different companies operated the different modes of transport. So, we paid 120 yuans for the cable car ( both ways included) & soon we were yanked over wooded forests. up, up we went and soon……….. we had the first sighting of the Great Wall of China. A moment to cherish.

The map at the starting point down below shows that there are 23 watchtowers and that the cable car station and the open-lift stations are different at both ends. The wall runs for over 2.5 kilometers but because of time constraint and believe me, physical constraint too, it was not possible to do the entire stretch. Once on top, close to Tower 16, it was a ” top of the world’ feeling.

The walk on the Wall is not easy though the flooring is fairly well-maintained. Involves a lot of steep climbs and then coming down steep slopes as the wall meanders over the wooded countryside. Season being autumn, the forests on both side sported a brown look. How beautiful the surroundings would look in spring, I wondered.We saw families pushing prams with babies too.So much importance attached to setting foot on one of the most visited tourist spots on this planet.

The watchtowers are three storied structures of brick where ammunition and stores were kept on the lower level with the second level being the living quarters and the open area for actual watch & shooting arrows when necessary. Soldiers used to patrol the Wall and the distance between watchtowers was not always the same. We were told that in case of enemy attacks, the soldiers used to send smoke signals to inform others, if during the day. If at night, fire was used to signal danger. One more, one more, we said as we moved up and down the Wall & in and out of watchtowers. We looked up and the Wall was till snaking up and beyond in the mountainside. We had our tour bus waiting and the guide had given the deadline as 2.30 PM. So we trekked back to the cable car station on our way down this magnificent UNESCO World Heritage site. Childhood  difficulties in answering questions about the Wall forgotten, only happy memories remained. A must-see destination! Can we see it from outer space if we become a space tourist in the future? The answer is NO. It is only folklore that The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from space.