The Great Wall: Overnight on JianKou

The Great Wall. One of the seven wonders and a piece of history with origins as early as 700 BC, even before the Qin dynasty. If you've never visited, you might think it's all one wall. Instead, it's many sections, all located a couple of hours outside Beijing. Each is different, both in surrounding locale, popularity (read: crowds), and status of repair.

{MuTianYu Section, 2006} 

Evaluated on these criteria, my favorite Great Wall section is MuTianYu: lush greenery, minimal crowds, well-maintained. A previous ChinaSnap! featured a picture from Jonathan's trip to BaDaLing, a very popular section of the Great Wall due to close proximity to Beijing.  

But my best experience on the Great Wall was when I hiked and camped overnight with friends on the JianKou section. Overgrown with plants and crumbling in many parts, JianKou is not for everyone. In fact, not all parts are open to the public. Truthfully, I'm not at all sure the part we hiked was open to the public. But we went, we hiked, and I wrote an account of the trip that I will share with you now.

The trip started with a long drive and visit to Great Wall section Si Ma Tai, and then further still to the home of our guide. While we thought we were stopping at the home to pick up supplies, we soon learned that we would actually be departing on the hike to the wall from his backyard.  The hike to JianKou was unexpected but relatively enjoyable—relatively since it involved over 2 hours of hiking in pitch black darkness.  We had few flashlights, and when I would dare to shine mine down at my feet I would see spiders as big as my palm scurring over, around, and hopefully under my shoes. At many points, we would have to scale the deteriorating walls and cross our fingers we wouldn't fall. 

{Climbing JianKou, 2009}

But the trek was well worth it when we arrived at the Wall.  We were pulled up and over into the tower which would be our home for the night and started the BBQ.  After playing two truths and a lie and eating barbeque skewers, I headed to sleep in a tent on top of the tower, freezing but inspired by the view of the Wall that I could see through the settling mist.  We woke up at 4am in the morning to try to see the sunrise but were again met with mist, making it seem that we were on a 20 ft. by 20 ft. block of stone wall floating in the clouds. 

{JianKou in the mist, 2009}

We started the hike at 7am after a breakfast of bread with jelly and hard boiled eggs, and hiked another 5 hours through JianKou to MuTianYu. Mist encircled our every step, and the hike was a silent meditation not to slip on the slick bricks and rubble. The hike was unintentionally extended when our guide became lost and we took a wrong turn off the wall in order to avoid the complex section of the knot that was not safe to walk on in its non-repaired state.  I became increasingly skeptical whether our overnight on JianKou was permitted when we came to a fence disallowing hikers to cross from MuTianYu to JianKou.  We were on the wrong side of the fence.  No harm, no foul, right?

{Border of JianKou and MuTianYu, 2009}

Comments

[Janet Vasquez]

How would you have explained that to the American Embassy--the wrong side of the wall. What an adventure to be sure! It is interesting that many American commercials are shot on the wall now. Just last month there was a whole fashion segment with a stark contrast to the wall in the array of clothes. I'm certain that you were coordinated for the hike.