Goodness, Gracious, Great Walls of Fire!

The T-birds had our last group sightseeing activity today, we went to the Great Wall at Mutianyu. We all piled into the tourbus and departed Beida for the 2 hour drive to the wall. I was tired, so I snoozed until we got to the countryside near the wall. Interestingly, all the villages in the area have built up these large, tacky restaurants to cater to Chinese tourists visiting the wall. I'm sure no foreign groups stop there, but they get plenty of local tourists in need of dining in a huge, fake rainforest.

Luckily the wall was not too crowded, despite the large parking lots which are no doubt filled up in the summer, and the usual gauntlet of hawkers selling t-shirts, fake silk robes, and the like. Mutianyu has not one but two cable cars that take you up and down, and even has an alpine slide luge thing (sans ice of course) to bring out back down. There is the traditional stairs option, but Jess, Mike, Vidya and I opted for the cable car since we were not feeling the one hour stairs ascent. As Franklin pointed out, once you climb the stairs TO the wall, you still have to hike UP it!

The wall was not too crowded, except for this horribly loud school group on a field trip. They were all running around and screaming, which was behavior more fit for smaller kids rather than high school age. My comment was, "Apparently all the one children have decided to come to the wall today!"

When we got to the wall, we had the option to go to the right, to the slide, and downhill, or to the left, which was uphill quite a ways but appeared to offer a great view. We opted for left.

The restored wall is much as I remember it, well kept up but with a few potholes and broken steps here and there. Mostly Chinese tourists, although I did see a smattering of laowais, and there was a huge pack of British charity hikers walking the wall to raise money for injured firefighter's families. The pictures I took made it seem like the wall was emptier than it really was. It was still pleasant though, to have a strenuous hike (the last hill was about a 50 degree incline, according to one of our classmates) and be in warmer weather. It was much more comfortable at the wall, noticeably warmer than Beijing.

It was a hazy day (or polluted?) so it wasn't a clear blue sky, but the cherry blossoms were starting to come out so the vistas were still pleasant. We got to the high point to find it clogged with the loud student group. One student asked to take a photo with me (do they think I'm famous?) and another showed me the little garter snake he bought for 10 yuan.

We headed back and had to hang on to the wall at times because the descent was so steep! My thigh muscles were very tired by the end. We thought about walking to the slide to ride it down but opted for the cable car instead. We made it through the gauntlet of hawkers (same old hard sell, but some new items, such as furry hats, which I resisted because it's getting warmer here, white fox skins and parasols) and had lunch on the bus.

We drove back to Beijing and I slept the whole way; I was quite tired! Overall Mutianyu is a pleasant place to visit, but only in the off-season I think. With the ease of access, too many people can come up and I could see it being very crowded in the summer. Die hards seeking solitude are better off at the more remote locations.