Demons and Dragons

Saturday 6th January 2007
Sid slept badly. In his dreams/nightmares, he first fell off the Great Wall and then had to do running repairs to the roof of the cable car on its ascent (à la Where Eagles Dare). But everything was ok when he awoke properly at 6 am. He was determined to conquer his demons (fear of heights). As I’d been awake since 5.30 (overexcited, I think, about the day ahead) we went for a swim in the hotel pool. Lovely pool and had it all to ourselves. We were picked up at 8 at the hotel for our group tour to the Great Wall. In fact, as we were the only two booked from our hotel, we had a private tour, for the price of the group tour. But I hadn’t heeded the warnings I’d been given about the tour guides taking you to the government ‘factory’ shops on the way to the Wall. And they did. Two jade shops, and one pearl shop on the way to the Ming Tombs. Quite interesting though and even their pushy sales techniques resulted in us buying only one very cheap jade bangle and a ‘lucky’ pisha (not sure how you spell it, but it’s a jade charm that brings success – not worked out who to give it to yet!). The Ming Tombs were quite interesting – some 13 of the 16 emperors of the Ming Dynasty buried there, and lots of treasure things to look at, many carved dragons, but quite honestly, I would have got through the rest of my life OK if I hadn’t seen them.


But oh no, not so the next stop. The Great Wall at Mutianyu, about 50 miles outside Beijing on a beautiful clear, sunny, very cold crisp day. One of life’s great experiences, because it is even more breathtaking than all the photos and films can show. But I’ll try to do it justice with a photo I’m attaching to this journal. We chose to go to Mutianyu after my intensive research of the past few months had suggested that the Wall at Badaling (the most popular tourist section) is quite commercialised and not nearly so spectacular as the Mutianyu section. First, the cable car, which takes you up the mountain to the wall – the wall is very high up in the mountains that surround Beijing, for obvious reasons - it was a fortress, after all. Sid took the cable car and actually enjoyed it (obviously taking on board Chairman Mao’s comments that ‘he who has not climbed the great wall is not a true man). Then the Wall. We walked it for a couple of hours. It is much steeper on the wall than I’d realised, even from the pictures I’d seen. And it really is stunning. The Wall originally ran for 5000 kms, which by my reckoning is around 3,000 miles. We did the stretch which runs for about two miles and didn’t even cover all of that in our two hours because it really is a climb, up and down, up and down. There are 20 ‘watchtowers’ along these two miles and we covered the section from tower 14 tower 18. Absolutely fantastic. And then the cable car down to the entrance point where you have to brave the onslaught of t-shirt and souvenir vendors. No wonder Chairman Mao also said ‘Every man who visits the great wall becomes a hero.’

We became heroes, splashing out £2 on two souvenir t-shirts.

Back on the minibus, we made a stop at a Chinese Tea House, to sample five types of tea, made the traditional way, each with a claim to cure a whole host of ailments. Dinner tonight was another treat – a sort of Kung Po Chicken, Egg and Tomato Noodles, another two large beers and a pot of tea. Didn’t break the bank either, as it was even cheaper than last night, at £2.20 and the waiter refused a tip. Tipping is not really in the culture here, but I guess that will change as soon as the Olympics hit town. All in all, another day that exceeded very high expectations.