When we first thought about visiting China, I didn’t know much about the region, but I did know two things I wanted to be sure to see: the Great Wall, and pandas. The pandas will come in a few weeks, when we get down to Chengdu further south, but the Great Wall of China was first on our agenda here in Beijing.
We didn’t want to just see the Great Wall like all the tourists do, however, we wanted to really get out and experience it. We found a tour company (the only one, according to their website – though I can’t help but be skeptical) with a license to actually camp overnight in tents on the Great Wall in a watchtower. How cool is that?! We eagerly signed up for a two day, one night hiking and camping tour in the middle of our Beijing visit, to break up our time the city a little bit.
That all seemed like a great plan until we arrived and saw the weather report – torrential rains for both of the days we were planning to be out at the Wall. The rest of the week looked much better for weather, so we emailed the company to ask if they could put us on a different tour any other days. Unfortunately they couldn’t (or wouldn’t), so there we were. [Editor’s Note: It was definitely a “wouldn’t” situation. They tried to cite the fact that during Hurricane Harvey the weather in Dallas, 4 hours from Houston, was pleasant, so perhaps the same would be true if there were rainstorms in Beijing. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.] I should also point out that because the vast majority of our trip is scheduled for tropical, Southeast Asian destinations, I packed very little in the way of warm clothes.
That morning, we were picked up from our hostel by our guide and a driver. The guide arrived on time, but the driver was late because of “traffic and weather”. An inauspicious start. When he arrived, we still had to make two more stops to pick up the other members of our trip – 5 of us in total: Rorie and me from the U.S., Fritz, an American expat living in the Philippines, and Jo and George, a young British couple.
Between driving all over Beijing to pick everyone up, plus a 2 hour drive out to our portion of the Wall, we had plenty of time to sit in traffic and stare out at the solid gray, chilly weather. I could barely see the buildings in the distance because of the clouds and rain. Were we even going to be able to see the Wall when we got there? What about those pictures you always see with the Wall snaking off through the hillsides – what if I couldn’t even get a solid picture? I brought my good camera, in addition to a waterproof GoPro, but what if I couldn’t take out my camera for fear of it getting ruined in the rain? Was I really going to go to the Great Wall of China for (probably) the only time in my life, and not be able to take a decent picture? I was definitely starting to wallow in self-pity a bit.
Between the drive and stopping for a (very good) hot lunch at a roadside spot where our driver mercifully ordered everything for us, we didn’t get started on our hike until about 2:30pm. Wearing pretty much all the layers I brought and topping it off with a plastic poncho our driver distributed, I set off with the group up a steep, stepped trail.
Our first view of the Wall in the distance as we climbed the stairs up the hill
The Wall quickly showed off the scene I had in my mind, with watchtowers dotting the hillsides off into the distance, even before we made it all the way up the hill. The hike along the Wall was a challenge, not just because of the steepness and frequent ups and downs following the ridgeline, but mostly because whenever we got to an exposed portion on top of a hill, the wind roared sideways at us, causing the plastic of the poncho to crackle deafeningly in our ears, and throwing the rain sideways into our legs, drenching our pants and shoes almost instantly.
The wettest selfie
The first hour or so of the hike was enjoyable in an almost surreal, giddy way – it was just so wet and the wind was so ridiculous, but there we were on the Great Wall of China, with not another soul in sight beyond our soggy group. I was mostly just thankful I had a waterproof case on my GoPro. The wall itself in this section was very wild and unrestored, with large portions so crumbled we had to go single file and use our hands to scramble up and over piles of rocks and former stairwells. Portions of the trail wound through trees and you could have mistaken it for just any forest hike, while other parts were unmistakably the Wall you see in photos, with a railing, openings for weapons, and stairs.
A damp but beautiful view of the wall from the top
Rorie surveying the land from the shelter of a watchtower
Modeling the latest in over-backpack poncho fashion
After another hour or two, the cold had seeped with the rain through all of my layers, and my lack of gloves or a hat was starting to become a problem. We eventually made it to the end of our scheduled hike, where the walkable portion of the wall ends with a barricade and a Chinese military area beyond it. We descended from the Wall to a local inn that exists, from what I can tell, entirely off of serving food to groups touring the Wall. There were guest rooms as well, but we were not about to give up on camping on the Wall, weather be damned. That was the whole reason we picked this tour out of all the others, and we were going to camp no matter how cold and wet it was out there. After a futile attempt to warm up and dry off a bit over dinner (again ordered by our guide), we changed clothes and headed back out.
Our accommodations for the evening, completely filling the narrow passageway in the watchtower
Because of our delay getting started, and our slow pace due to the rain, it was pitch black outside by the time we finished dinner. With headlamps and flashlights, we loaded up with tents, sleeping bags, and sleeping pads from a garage near the Inn, and wearily headed back up the steep hill to the top of the Wall we had come down from. We hiked to a watchtower that was more restored (read: flat, and with an intact roof) and immediately put up our tents and dove inside. Any ideas of telling stories and campsite camaraderie were quickly dispensed with as we all immediately got into our respective sleeping bags and huddled in the dark, trying to stay warm despite the wind howling through the passageways of the watchtower. “We head down at 6am!” our guide told us – which seemed early until I realized that we were going to bed at approximately 8:30pm. The night was cold and windy, but about as comfortable as camping usually is. We were awoken to a comparatively light drizzle and no wind at about 5:50 by a Chinese woman from the Inn down the hill speaking loudly [Editor’s Note: She was basically yelling, which made her my least favorite human being in the world in that moment in time] in Mandarin to our guide (probably asking why none of us were up and ready to go yet). We packed up and headed back down to the Inn for a breakfast of hot noodle soup and tea.
Soggily photographing with my camera from the shelter of a watchtower
That sign says “Detour” and points straight off the wall. We did not take the detour.
The schedule was to drive to another portion of the Wall for some more hiking, then to have lunch and head back to Beijing to end our tour. As we drove the “twenty minutes”, which was of course more like 45, we passed a remarkable amount of construction, police checkpoints, and activity, including a future Club Med and some other very fancy-looking hotels. This was one of the more popular portions of the Wall called Jingshaling, much more built up and restored. The contrast to the previous day was stark, but the Wall itself still seemed almost deserted. I think the time of year, combined with the bad weather and the weekday timing meant that we hit an incredibly empty time to go to the Wall. If there’s any silver lining in bad weather, it certainly seemed to get rid of the crowds for us.
After stairs, stairs, and more stairs, our legs were screaming at us to take a break after the previous day, but the only way to stay warm was to keep moving. The rain was much lighter, so I was finally able to take out my camera and play around with taking “real” photos after my day of blindly aiming the GoPro in the general direction of the thing I was looking at. [Editor’s Note: The weather this second day really cooperated and Jess was able to get the type and quality of pictures that had been deprived from her the first one. A little cloudy, but quite clear and beautiful.]
The mist really adds a nice, slightly ominous quality I think
Now that’s more like it!
Hey I’m from Seattle; a little rain isn’t going to stop me.
After making it all the way up to the Wall (that’s the part they forget to tell you – getting to the wall is much harder than walking along it), we could see the difference immediately. This portion, our guide explained, had been rebuilt more often and more recently, because more actual wars were fought along this part. [Editor’s Note: Over 40 wars were fought at that section of the wall since its inception. Damn impressive.] It was very cool to look off in the distance and imagine marauding hordes coming toward the Wall. It’s an intimidating structure and the scale is staggering, especially when you think about building it without modern machines to help. We headed back down when it all started to look the same, and I was shivering through the damp layers that never dried from the day before.
The ride back was uneventful except for a fun moment when the hood of the van started smoking due to a particularly hard hit we had taken on the potholed road earlier that morning. Our driver pulled over and called someone on video chat, pointing the phone at the smoking engine so the man on the other side could see. After a few minutes, the worst of the smoke had dissipated, and we kept driving without having made any fixes or changes to the van. The van made it, though, and we were successfully dropped of back at our hostel where a warm shower and dry clothes awaited us.
Overall, this was one of those moments where you keep thinking the whole time “well, it’ll be a good story later!” Would I have preferred to go on a sunny, warmer day? Yes, absolutely. I didn’t have as much fun as I would have in better weather. But having said that, this was an incredible site, a world wonder, and an activity I wouldn’t have wanted to skip for anything. I’m glad we went, and I’m thankful we had so few other tourists nearby to grant us unencumbered and wild views off into the distance. Feeling alone on the Great Wall is a special experience.
Oh, and the next day I bought a scarf, gloves, warm hat, raincoat, and leggings. Hindsight is 20/20. [Editor’s Note: The rain provided Jess with the excuse for shopping that she’d been craving. Everyone wins, including the many clothing vendors in the Pearl Market in Beijing.]
