I mean, it’s a Good wall….

Featuring a very sweaty woman, and an excellent ‘wall cat’

Do they not have those in your country’s walls?

On my first weekend in China, I woke up early, shuffled myself via the Metro to a Tour Meet Spot, and then successfully managed to buy myself fluffy bao buns and coffee for breakfast before boarding the tourbus.

Which was definitely some sort of new stage unlocking.

And made very significant by the fact that I had discovered Luckin’ Coffee- a huge chain coffee shop and significant rival to Starbucks (at half the price), found every 200m in the big cities.

Most importantly, Luckin’ sells Oatly iced lattes, which I proceeded to live on throughout my China stay.

This first time around, I used the apple translate app to write ‘please can I have an iced oat milk latte’ and waved my phone around a bit, and then successfully paid (1.80 pounds!!) with Alipay.

Ultimately, one of my biggest ‘China Life Unlocked’ moments of the whole trip was when I worked out how to order Luckin’ for pickup (no human contact required) via the Alipay app. Sure, the first time I did it I ordered two coffees because I couldn’t work out how to delete one of them. But soon enough I was a natural, and smugly ordering coffee for myself and my colleagues (two coffees, but deliberately this time).

Anyway, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, my journey of the day was to the Great Wall.

(^^I love China, I love the Great Wall)

After a quick search on some blogs before leaving, I made the choice to visit the Mutianyu section of the Wall, which is a little further away from the Badaling section, and therefore a bit less crowded (theoretically). I could only visit on the weekends (because work), so figured that might be the better choice. The downside is that you can’t get there easily with public transport, so I booked a tour, which was effectively a small bus that drove us there, and then drove us back again.

All up, 27 pounds (about 45 AUD?), but keep in mind that you’ll have to pay another 20 or so pounds each for cable car access up and down each side of the wall.

Somewhere in the distance is a wall???

Apparently parts of the Wall were built as early as 7th cent BC, but the main mission began during the Qin Empire, in 220 BC. Even so, this wall, and the second phase wall built during the Han empire in the 1st and 2nd century AD were more of a mounded earth construction and the Wall as we know it now is that built in the 14th to 17th Century during the Ming empire.

All of that to keep the nomadic hoards to the North out of China.

At the Muntianyu section, you can choose to go up to the North or the South side of the Wall, and both have some options for cable car access if you’re less into climbing.

You first arrive in a kind of ‘wall village’ with some restaurants, meeting points and lots of tourist shops, from which you can take the shuttle bus to the wall itself.

I headed straight to shuttle, and towards the North entrance.

I walked up a lot of stairs, at a speed that was arguably only slightly faster than that of the giant millipedes who were probably following me to lay eggs inside my shoes.

It was.. hot.

And humid.

Made more humid by the deeply gross amounts of sweat I was producing.

But it also smelled like very ripe sweet apricots (we were surrounded by apricot trees), which was not at all unpleasant.

And eventually, after a lot of panting I saw the Wall.

And it saw me.

Hello Wall!

A few more steps and then….

Just like that…..

I was on the Greatest of Greats.

Big hint here, if you want views with less people in them then you might consider going up the stairs instead of the cable car: this section of the wall was definitely less populated.

Of course, if you want a blank canvas to take photos of yourself against, then maybe consider that you will have that as an option, but that the photos will certainly not be you in your most cool and cucumber-y phase.

But behold!

A wall!

I walked along for some time, going up a bit and down a bit, and occasionally passing some locals:

He said meow!

Also the children called the cat a meow-meow which is so sweet.

The wall is broken up by various watch towers, which- if you choose to not wear sunscreen or a had due to some insane notion that the sun outside Australia can’t burn your skin- turn out to be pretty nice places to rest for a bit in the shade.

Despite the heat, it was a fairly ok and not-too-uphill walk.

And if you want to stop for a snack or a cold beer, there’s that option too:

The final stretch up the wall- the part you can see in the background of these next photos- is the hardest and steepest part of Mutianyu. It’s referred to as the Hero Slope, apparently because Chairman Mao once said that you’re not a Hero until you’ve climbed the wall.

As it turns out, I am, in fact, a Hero.

As proven by this rock.

(probably)

(Note that Heroes get sweaty too.)

((Probably more so than the rest of you folks.))

In fact, despite the official hero rock sign, the sign that I was the most happy to see was this one:

The sign that meant I didn’t have to climb any more!

As it turned out, once we got up to the Hero Nest (not an official name), it was quite impossible to get back down.

A queue had formed but didn’t seem to be making much progress, until a guard with a megaphone appeared and started shouting at people and shifting us back downhill.

Much appreciated.

By this point I had started to get a bit nevous about timings, so I raced back across the wall, hopped on the cablecar to get back to the base of the North side of the Wall, and zoomed across to the South entrance to go look at THAT part of the wall.

I had to queue to go in the (slightly rickety) chairlift up the mountain, and enjoyed a fairly short but lovely journey through bushy apricot trees.

Once up the top, I spent about 10 seconds looking around before hopping into the incredibly massive and slightly slow-moving queue to come back down. Time had become an issue, and I was worried I’d miss the bus meetup and be stranded at the wall.

In the end I’m very happy I chose the Northside hike first, although would probably say that the first part (getting to the wall via all the stairs and millipedes) is not worth it. If I repeated the experience, I’d take the lift to the wall- and double back a bit if I wanted photos without too many people in shot. And then just hike up the actual wall part. Save some time, save some electrolytes.

Going up and down on the South took quite a lot of time, but most of that was standing in line. Which, by that time and energy of the day, was actually mostly ok.

Also, did I mention that I chose to come back down by toboggan?

ZOOOM ZOOM!

Speed sadly a bit limited by the children in front of me.

Mush kids, MUUSH MUSSSHH!

I slid, speed walked and shuttled back to the meeting point with just 10 minutes to spare, and the guide helped me pack some of the buffet food into a container to take on the bus with me.

Over an hour later and back at the dropoff point, I spent a bit of time wandering around a shopping center (mostly the supermarkets), but soon decided that it was time to find my way back to the hotel and sweet-sweet rest ASAP.

So let’s end with our traditional ‘fantastic foods of China (ok and some imported goods here too)’ montage shall we?