Catching Up - The Great Wall of China

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, our building has not had internet for the past two days. It's back now, so, after satisfying my Facebook cravings, I give you more updates!

Friday, June 27th

On Friday, we left campus at eight in the morning on a bus to go to the Great Wall. The spot where we went was about an hour and a half drive from Beijing, called Badaling (I think it's the most common place to visit the Wall). About halfway through the drive we started seeing mountains. Mountains here remind me a little of those that I saw around the Rhein River in Germany. They are close together, covered in trees, and very steep (although not that tall). The weather started off decently while we were still in the city, but as we got out into the mountains it started getting extremely foggy. The mist made the hills extremely beautiful, but visibility was not very good.

When we got on to the wall, visibility was even worse. The guard towers are not very far apart, but you could not see from one to the next. Even though you couldn't see more than the little section of wall in front of and behind you, it was still really cool to get to climb. I think that the visibility issues gave me a small picture perspective on the wall, rather than big picture. I definitely noticed more the extremities of the slopes, because that was all I could see.

I have heard that the Great Wall could have either ten foot soldiers or five people on horseback abreast at any point, but having been there makes me wonder about ancient Chinese. Did they ever actually march their soldiers along the wall like that? If so, they must have been almost superhuman. There were parts of the wall where we were clinging to the hand rail in order not to slide down the slippery steps. And we were at one of the easier sections of the wall to climb! Although, based on the number of girls we saw climbing in high heels, maybe Chinese people are just tougher than we Americans are. I also don't know how a horse could manage some of the wall sections. Maybe Chinese calvary horses back in the day were a little closer to mountain ponies or goats.

I definitely want to go back to the Great Wall at some point in my life, preferably when it's sunny. What little scenery we could see was gorgeous. There's something indefinably mysterious about the mountains in China. There were crenelations in the wall (I think that's the word I'm looking for) that you could stick your head through, and when you did, all sound from the other people atop the wall was gone. All you could hear was birds and animals from the trees. It was such a peaceful sensation, especially because there were so many people on the wall.