It Really Is A Great Wall

This is a continuation of my RTW diary from November 2003.

When I white-water-rafted down the Zambezi it was 39 degrees Celsius (101F). Temperatures in India varied between 31 and 36 degrees. Hong Kong was about 28 and even in Japan in the rain it was around 16 – 20 degrees. As I arrived on Thursday at the Great Wall, it was perhaps just above freezing.

In Beijing the day before the weather had been 3 degrees and raining. 60 miles north of the city at the Great Wall, it had been colder still. So despite the fact that the early morning fog had lifted to bathe the landscape in bright sunshine and a strong wind was blowing to provide the clearest of air, as I climbed up onto the Wall, I found it was covered in a 2 inch thick blanket of snow!

It was worth the cold though! The air was crystal clear – pristine in its clarity. My effort for climbing the first tower and getting out onto the wall causeway was rewarded with a view that stretched far across the fringe of the Mongolian steppe plain to the North and to the South I could see perhaps 30 miles of Great Wall lacing its way over snow-dusted mountains. A magical sight… though my ears were nearly frozen off with the wind.

While I could have stayed in the lee of the wall and watched all the Japanese tourists slipping over on a treacherous bit of ice, I climbed up a fiercely steep section with 269 steps to the highest part of the wall I could see. Sheltered on the top of the North Tower were a couple of stalls selling ‘I’ve climbed the Great Wall’ T-Shirts and the ever present marble name stamps.

It was funny though to come across three lads of the Peoples’ Liberation Army just on the causeway on the other side of the tower having a snowball fight! I wasn’t allowed to join in though as they stopped when they realised I’d seen them and pretended to get back to guard duty! You do see the green uniform of the army everywhere, but China has conscription and the largest standing army in the world. Is guard duty on the Great Wall, in winter the short straw though do you think?

I was criticised later in the day by an Argentinian restaurant proprietor who suggested that I would have had a more ‘authentic’ experience had I gone to a different section of the wall. The stretch she recommended has not been restored (so for authentic read derelict), and she felt it was more interesting than Badaling, where I had gone. But as the place she recommended comes without hand rails, but does come with a 300ft drop off the one side of the wall that doesn’t have a rampart, I was more than happy to stick to the tourist trail on this icy day. I’ve already slipped over and landed on my arse once, 2 metres from the edge of the Victoria Falls. Clumsy and ungainly as I am, I was more than happy to skid down the icy patches of the wall, hanging on to the hand rail, that was in turn attached to the wall. If it meant I avoided the ‘authentic’ experience, it also meant I avoided a trip to Chinese casualty…! Besides, there was nothing inauthentic about the steepness of the stretch we walked and nothing inauthentic about that fantastic view.

What was perhaps a little 'inauthentic' (although I do hate that term) was the method of deliviering me from the car park at the bottom of the wall to the first tower... Namely on a personlised rollercoaster bobsleigh. Quirky.