I can’t believe I’ve never been to the Great Wall despite being this old…
So, visiting the Great Wall this time became a very important mission.
The Great Wall is a collective term for the massive military fortifications built in ancient China across different eras to defend against invasions by nomadic tribal alliances from the northern steppes. Stretching over ten thousand li from east to west, it is also known as the Ten-Thousand-Li Great Wall. The existing ruins are primarily from the Ming Great Wall, originally built in the 14th century, extending from Jiayuguan in the west to Hushan Great Wall in the east. The Great Wall sites span 15 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions including Beijing, Tianjin, Qinghai, Shandong, and Inner Mongolia, comprising a total of 43,721 heritage sites. It is also the largest single structure ever built by human civilization and the building with the longest continuous history of renovation.
In April 2009, the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage reported that the latest comprehensive archaeological survey showed the Ming Great Wall has a total length of 8,851.8 km, including 6,259.6 km of man-made walls, 359.7 km of trenches, and 2,232.5 km of natural barriers. The walls have an average height of 6 to 7 meters and a width of 4 to 5 meters.
On June 5, 2012, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage announced that after nearly five years of investigation and verification, the total length of the Great Wall across all dynasties is 21,196.18 km. This was China’s first scientific and systematic measurement of the total length of the Great Wall throughout history. This length is approximately 108 times longer than the second-longest wall, the Gorgan Wall in Iran (195 km).
Mutianyu Great Wall is also a 5A-rated scenic area. Compared to the overcrowded Badaling, it truly feels like a pure land~~~ Even during the Qingming Festival holiday, when the parking lot was almost full, there weren’t many people on the wall itself~~~ I guess the main reason is the inconvenient transportation; there’s basically no public transit, and it seems there are only two direct buses to the scenic area per day… So driving yourself is pretty much the only option.
We rented a car and headed over. There wasn’t much traffic along the way, and we even enjoyed the toll-free expressway during the short holiday~~ The weather was decent—not as blue as the day at the Bird’s Nest, but not heavily polluted either… Once we arrived in Huairou, farmland like this was easy to spot…
There’s a Subway and a pizza place at Mutianyu Great Wall, and they even sell Baskin-Robbins ice cream inside. We grabbed a quick lunch at Subway before heading up. Prices were indeed slightly higher than in the city center, but the quality was guaranteed and the markup wasn’t excessive. After filling up, we happily set off to climb the Great Wall… well, actually, we took the cable car up…
There are two options for ascending: a cable car to the west side, and a gondola lift plus toboggan slide to the east side… The two sides operate independently. Tickets are 60 yuan one-way and 80 yuan round-trip for either. However, if you want to take the cable car up on the west side… and then walk over to slide down on the east side, you’ll need to buy two one-way tickets… Since I basically just wanted to go up for a quick look, I decisively chose the round-trip cable car ticket…
Cable Car
I have to say, seeing the Great Wall for the first time was quite breathtaking…
On a distant mountain, large characters read “Loyalty to Chairman Mao,” and a foreigner even asked me what they meant~~~ Haha. We went a bit early, so the plants had just started sprouting; it would probably be even more beautiful if the vegetation on the mountains were fully green.
A small complaint about AVIS car rental service… The rented car didn’t have a full tank—in fact, it had less than a quarter tank… And we had to return it at the same fuel level. That’s quite a technical challenge! You have to refuel right after picking up the car and precisely estimate how much gas you’ll need… It was exactly as described in “Country Driving”—probably the same branch too… Still hasn’t changed after all these years..
Photos in this post taken with SONY NEX-5R + 16-50mm f3.5-5.6, post-processed in Lightroom.
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