Day 24 part 1: The Great Wall

We left at 7am so we could get to the Great Wall before all the other tourists. The Great Wall is another big reason I wanted to visit China. To walk on the infamous landmark has been a burning desire of mine since I was just a kid.

It was started by the first Qin Emperor, the same one who commissioned the Terra Cotta warriors. It took a million prisoners, workers and laborers to build the first 5,000 kilometers. It was all built with stone. Something I never even thought of before going, when you see pictures of the great wall it’s this massive structure rolling up and down the terrain. When you actually walk on it, you realize that rolling terrain is actually very steep uneven mountainsides, and those people had to carry and assemble STONES on that. Later during the Han dynasty the wall was expanded another 5,000 kilometers to protect the silk road. In the Mind dynasty they repaired a lot of the damage using brick so the wall is a good combination now of stone and brick.

There are several sections tourists can visit. We went to the Juyong pass. It had two parts to climb. Of course we all instantly headed towards the higher, harder part of the wall. We were only the second bus there so on the way up there weren’t many people which was nice. It was a very steep climb to the tower at the top of the mountain. There were three gates on the way up. It was really crowded up to the first gate. I’d say about 75% of the people went up to the first gate then stopped and went back down. That first leg was also the hardest part so I could see why. The stairs were mega steep, I swear some steps were two feet high. I definitely needed a break at the first stop and I wondered if I was even going to make it. Ryan of course was mister monkey man again and bounded off ahead of me. 

The Juyong pass at the Great Wall in Beijing

Thankfully the route got easier after the first leg, but it was still a challenge, it was still climbing a never ending staircase. The funniest thing was about half way up was a small tourist shop. I can’t imagine they made a lot of money because there were shops also at the bottom and no one was going to buy anything with the intention of carrying it down a couple hundred very steep and crowded stairs.

About a third of our group made it to the very top tower. It took about ten minutes to catch my breath, then another fifteen of staring out off the top of the mountain and just marveling at the view. It was unbelievable. The whole experience of doing something you’ve always wanted to do is incredible. I’ve always said to myself, someday I’m gonna climb the great wall. And there was I standing on top, feeling the wind, seeing the wall weave through the mountain going off into the distance, and just reveling in the fact that I did it. 

You can’t let life just pass you buy, if there are things you want to do you have to make them an actual priority and do them before you get too old or too sick. Your happiness is the greatest and most important thing, always.

On the way back down Ryan and I both made an effort to count the number of stairs. I’m going to spell this out in an attempt to emphasize just how impressive this number actually is.

One thousand. Six Hundred. Twenty Seven steps. Give or take about twenty.

We walked up and back down 1,627 steps. My legs were literally shaking by the time we got back down and for the next two days I could not exit the bus without gripping the handrail for support. When’s the last time you walked up a thousand steps? I decided it was required that I get a souvenir of our accomplishment and bought a cheap little plaque thing that said I climbed the wall. It was a lot more crowded by that time too, there were several buses in the parking lots and people scattered all over the wall. The types of people we saw were interesting. It wasn’t just tourists in hiking books. There were men in business suits and young girls all dressed up in high heels. Not really the apparel I would generally choose if I knew I was going to climb a wall that day.