Waking up at a reasonable hour after last night's losing battle against sleep has me wondering what to do first. Food perhaps. Breakfast is included with the room so that seems easy enough. I seek out the restaurant in the rear courtyard.
The restaurant is pretty Beijing mid-market hotel typical. I try to avoid the attempts at English breakfast and grab the supposedly Chinese things that are available. There are some tiny sweet bao filled with not red bean paste, plus a bit of fried rice, a fried egg, and something that looks like yu xiang rou si (fish flavoured pork). I have to ask for chop sticks. It is still a pleasant surprise that my Mandarin is comprehensible on some level. Reservations about the food aside it is filling and has a high calorie count. Much needed for the coming walk along the great wall.
While I'm in the restaurant two English citizens also enter. I strike up a conversation and ask to join them. On making the acquaintance of Mike and Tina I discover that they are co-workers who have come to Beijing for a few days having flown up from Hong Kong. They are employed there dealing with the Lehman Bros bankruptcy clean up. I notice that they have completely avoided any Chinese food whatsoever.
As we break fast together I find out they they are also heading to the great wall today. They had booked a driver to take them to Simatai, much further out and more wild than Mutianyu. I am surprised, the guide book suggesting that could take more than a day, but they think it would be just one day all up with the information they received from the reception. I quickly decide to crash their trip to Simatai. On asking if they would happy to have me along they say they would be generously in favour. Great! They are also leaving immediately after breakfast.
I needed to cancel my Mutianyu trip, but the driver had already arrived. This meant that I had to pay one quarter of the total fee I would have paid for the whole trip. This isn't a problem at all, about $ 30 USD and the driver is really happy about getting the ¥ 150 for doing nothing.
The other driver, Mike, Tina and I get in the minivan to Simatai. We make small talk on the trip out. The driver says nothing. On a petrol stop we stock up on some snacks for the wall. I thought driving in Chinese cities was hairy, but that was before I experienced the Chinese approach to the open road. You just have to believe in the driver and laugh it off. Several suicidal passing maneuvers later the wall appears on top of some distant craggy hills, the guard towers punctuating it's stretch along the ridge. Not long after that, we arrive at the Simatai tourist complex and the entry to this part of the wall. First order of business is to buy tickets then find the toilet. I buy a black cap with a red star on it, the hawker wants ¥ 20 but I talk her down to ¥ 15. I want some lip balm as well, but she doesn't have any to sell. She does let me use some of hers however. It's really nice of her but as I apply it from my finger to my lips I think I'm probably letting myself in for some hepatitis. Mike buys two tramping poles to walk with. I think it's stupid but he thinks it will help and is dead keen on it so keep my mouth shut. Maybe he's right.
We take some photos at the complex and are set to hit the great wall. We reckon it will be a three hour trek to Zheshanling where the driver will be waiting to pick us up, hopefully.
The trek itself starts of with a well made stone path up a reasonable gradient to the wall proper. The air temperature is still below freezing and the river we walk past is frozen over. Pleasantly it is not long before the walking sets core temperatures rising. On the way we meet a few Chinese tourists, and the odd hawker including one selling home made slingshots. I'm able to ask one of the tourists how many hours she thinks it will be to Zheshanling, she thinks four hours.
It is not too long before we get to our first guard tower and have to make a choice: right or left. Zheshanling is apparently to the left so we head down to the river and a swing bridge. We are all thinking that this bridge is going to be really dodgy. It sort of is in a way, there is a toll to cross the bridge of ¥ 5. The tax is extracted by a jovial individual and we are soon on our way. The bridge itself seems reasonably sturdy but we don't hang around.
Immediately on this section of the wall several things are noticeable. This is not a well maintained section, it is definitely wild with loose stones, missing steps, crumbling sections and a near vertical incline in a few places. It's great! I'm also glad for the company of Mike and Tina, not just for the good conversation either! An injury out here by yourself would be a real problem.
There is plenty of agriculture around this section of the wall (and other sections it turns out) where corn is grown. We also meet the first of several hawkers on the wall proper. This woman is elderly and says she wants to sell some postcards so she can go home. It is a strange situation. You don't really want to buy any of the dodgy souvenirs (photo books, t-shirts, postcards) they are selling, and they all sell exactly the same stock, but you feel bad for many of them apparently just eking out a living off the tourists that venture this far out. I will admit that the very Chinese availability of beer on the great wall was too much of a temptation to resist. Perhaps I should have resisted as the pull tab (not the familiar stay tab device) on the can broke off. However, the can was open enough to taste the brew which could be described as 'soapy'.
It turns out many tourists venture this far out and we see at least five groups of five or more tourists with several guides attached, all walking in the opposite direction from Zheshanling to Simatai. It seemed like a lot. They must have got started really early.
Along the wall you are almost certain to run into a 'guide'. Someone who will follow you along the wall and point out the odd thing about the construction and the area, a good one will at least. What they can say is usually minimal but we had the good fortune to cross paths with Fong Hua. She translated her name as 'Windy Flower' and claimed to be a farmer growing corn near Zheshanling. We all engaged in a stilted conversation in English as we wandered along the wall, I tried some of my broken Mandarin out too, especially the phrases I thought would be really unuseful: asking about someone's family, how many people, how many children, etc. It worked well enough and she said she had two sons. I said that was great, but she said a son and a daughter would be better. This wasn't quite rural China proper but it was interesting to see that either western perceptions about Chinese child gender preferences were wrong, or Chinese preferences have changed quite a bit in recent times. Of course it could be that Fong Hua's preferences were atypical.
We stopped for several breaks along the way, resting and having a drink and a snack. I got stuck into some candied haws I have left over from last night, I also bought some sachima from the petrol station. The English crowd aren't so keen on this 'local' fare and are happier with a bit of a chocolate. I give them the snickers bars that I brought along.
We knew that Fong Hua would try and sell us the same dodgy souvenirs at the end of her 'tour' but we were much happier to oblige her than the other hawkers. She really added something to the walk. I got a 'I climbed the great wall' t-shirt. I figured it was the least out of a bad bunch.
The sun began to set in the late afternoon and the wall took on a golden glow as it wound over the hills off into the distance. Fong Hua leaves us shortly after we have to pay for another ticket for entering the Zheshanling section of the wall (¥ 50) and we draw the attention of a far less capable guide who we do our best to discourage. We are nearly there and it is a mix of relief and disappointment that before too long we arrive at the Zheshanling end of the wall. There has been heavy restoration of this section of the wall and it is insipidly new. Initially there is some concern that the driver hasn't arrived to pick us up. Tina makes a phone call to the hotel has and they assure us that the driver has arrived. We then realise we have to walk out of the Zheshanling great wall tourist complex that we didn't realise we were in, actually similar to the one at Simatai, to find the driver. While we were waiting around to figure this out I was amused by the inability of Mike to ignore the hawkers and he got pulled into buying yet more product. They love him!
After what was actually a really decent trek the relatively plush seats of the minivan are a welcome relief. We finish up the last of the snacks and find some chocolate that we thought we had left in the van, but was in the English guy's bag the whole time! It tastes good and it is not long before we are all drifting off on the two hour drive back to Beijing.
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