Journey to the World

The great wall of China has many parts, some visited by more tourists, some by less. That day I woke up early for a change, so I took the opportunity to visit The Great Wall in Badaling. This is the most touristic part of the wall, but to be honest I didn’t mind walking in the same route with thousands of other Chinese tourists.

The Great Wall is located a one hour bus ride from Beijing. An organized tour from the hotel is expensive – 260 yuan (including a ride and lunch). It gets out at a crazy hour – 6:20 in the morning. I took the cheapest realistic option – bus number 919. In order to get to the bus station, I took the subway. The subway’s ticket is ridiculously cheap (1 yuan). From the subway you have the walk about 10 minutes to the bus station. The bus leaves about every twenty minutes. The ticket costs 12 yuan. Last bus leaves the great wall to Beijing at 16:00, so make sure your schedule is right.

The Great Wall in Badaling is loaded with Chinese tourists on Fridays. I guess it gets worse on Saturdays and Sundays. The views and landscape are breathtaking, simply beautiful. Nonetheless, looking backwards, if I had the option, I would’ve picked a different part of the wall.

Although there is a cable car going up to the wall, it’s much more fun to climb the stairs together with thousands of Chinese tourists. Western tourists are swollen within the Chinese crowd as if they never existed. The climbing can be difficult at times, but bearable. At some stage you reach a point from which you can descend on some sort of a roller coaster. I headed up to the top point where many visitors do a U-turn, going back to where they started. If you plan to do like I did, keep walking as the wall turns right. The ascend turns into a descend. In some parts there are stairs and in other parts a steep slope. You would have to hang to the hand rail to avoid slipping.

Although it doesn’t seems like it, the route is indeed circular. Those who decided to go on to the difficult parts, eventually arrive at the entrance gate. To sum it up, you need three to four hours of steady walking to complete the entire circular route.

While I was walking, I was addressed by shy Chinese tourists asking me to get a photo with them. A girl from Hong Kong surpassed that and asked me for my email. Before this routine started to tire me, I collected my fee by asking to get a photo with my own camera as well. All in all, the Chinese are an attraction to me no less than I’m an attraction to them.

On the exit from the compound there’s a large cage of black Asian bears. These bears look at tourists, waving while asking for fruits, thrown from above. They catch fruit using their mouth. You can buy some fruit from the locals. Retrospectively looking, although they look really cute, this entire charade smells like animal abuse. The poor bears have to beg to get a little food. They stay under the sun during the entire day. Although I enjoyed seeing them, I hope someone will do something about this (but it’s probably not going to happen).

At 16:00 I arrived back in Beijing at the 919 bus station. I walked around looking for something interesting (none to be found), and managed to lose my way. The problem in Beijing is even when you do carry a map of the city, which in this case I didn’t, it’s easy to lose your way. Since no one is ever speaking English when you get lost, and even if you did find someone who speaks a little English, this person gives you insufficient instructions, or such instructions that when you get to the next junction you start thinking what the hell did he mean. You may find yourself circling the same spot for quite some time until you get to your destination.

A lovely Chinese woman tried to explain (in Mandarin of course) how to get to my target till she gave up and led me herself to the station… Yeah, this can work. I went on the subway. On the way I thought to myself which is the correct station to get down at. I got down in the wrong station (of course), but it’s not that bad, 2 more yuans to get one station back. The subway trains in Beijing goes in a circular route every few minutes so usually you don’t have to wait.

 

This article was published at 5-09-2008 Time: 13:01 and belongs to categories Beijing, Great Wall Of China, Far East Travel Journal 2008 - 2009, Villages, Sichuan Province, China. You can follow comments to this article using the feed RSS 2.0. You can post a comment, or trackback from your website.