Before I start, I would like to say that the Great Wall has been a place I have wanted to visit for many years! Ever since I found out about its existence in elementary school, I just had to go see it for myself. The Great Wall was the foremost reason why I even booked by Beijing ticket. You read about it in a book, drool over the photos from national geographic, and you shake your head and wonder how such a collosol structure even exists. You read about how many years it took to build it, the distance it covers, and all the people who lost their lives slaving to build it, will leave you appreciating it even more!

I read the best way to travel in Beijing was by having your own private driver. It costs more, but you get to places much faster and thus are able to accomplish a lot more in a day. Someone on Revscene.net (a board I visit periodically) left me a contact of a Beijing driver named John. I emailed John and was able book a whole day to visit the Great Wall and the Summer Palace. The morning started at 8am, and the drive out was 2hours, which of course I slept the whole way there. The Great Wall has a couple entrances; two are located very close to each other, only a couple towers away from one another. The other is hours out from the main entrances and is better suited for hikers who want trek the 4 hour journey and experience more than just a beautiful view. I did not notice until I took the trip out, but in the winter Beijing gets very dry. In the summer the Great Wall is surrounded by lushious green trees and an abundance of life, but in the winter the place looks like a desert. Trees weren’t getting any water, flowers or plant life looked non-existent and the mountains resembled piles of sand. It would have been nice to at least have some snow, but nontheless the Great Wall was everything I had ever hoped and imagined plus so much more. John had dropped me at Mutianyu entrance (one of the 3 entrances) where you can apparently buy a tobogganing ride back down (YAY!). John told me to head right because from there you can get a better view of the whole wall, but 30 minutes in you come to a stone which tells you to turn around because the rest of the way is out of bounds. I disregarded the warning and just walked around it.

As you head further out of bounds you start to notice what Mother Nature is truly capable of when you give it time. There were branches growing out of cracks in stones, part of the wall disappeared from years of weathering caused by snow and rain. I had finally reached a spot where travel along the wall was no longer accessible. The whole tower had collapsed upon itself and for the rest of the wall a pile of bricks lay scattered around something that somewhat resembled an unmaintained road. If you look further into the mountains all you could make out were towers, but no road or walls connecting them all together. This was the location where I gathered the majority of my shots as I was able to see most of the wall spanning up and down the terrain. This was also the first time on my trip where I put away the camera and just enjoyed the view with my own eyes. On the way back I got to experience the Toboggan down the hill. I held myself back a while as I wasn’t holding anybody up so I could let all the slow pokes in front make their way down first. Even though they made it pretty clear speeding wasn’t going to be tolerated, I wasn’t in the mood to make my way down at a leisure pace either. When I knew I made enough space between the other riders I held the leaver forward, picked up some speed and banked every corner liek a bobsledder. Before I met up with John I made my way through the street venders picking up souvenirs for myself, family, and friends.

If you have some time, I encourage you to visit the Great Wall wiki page to get a better understanding of how the Great Wall played a big roll in Chinese History.

The Great Wall of China (simplified Chinese: 长城; traditional Chinese: 長城; pinyin: Chángchéng; literally “long city/fortress”) or (simplified Chinese: 万里长城; traditional Chinese: 萬里長城; pinyin: Wànlǐ Chángchéng; literally “The long wall of 10,000 Li (里)”) is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in China, built, rebuilt, and maintained between the 5th century BC and the 16th century to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire from Xiongnu attacks during the rule of successive dynasties. Several walls, referred to as the Great Wall of China, were built since the 5th century BC. One of the most famous is the wall built between 220–206 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang; little of it remains; it was much farther north than the current wall, which was built during the Ming Dynasty.

The Great Wall stretches over approximately 6,400 km (4,000 miles) from Shanhaiguan in the east to Lop Nur in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia, but stretches to over 6,700 km (4,160 miles) in total. At its peak, the Ming Wall was guarded by more than one million men. It has been estimated that somewhere in the range of 2 to 3 million Chinese died as part of the centuries-long project of building the wall. — Wiki

I hadn’t read up much about the Summer Palace before I visited but from what I heard it had a nice and peaceful Imperial Garden. I was actually asking John more about it on our way there. The Summer Palace first started out as the garden, but most of the complexes suffered major attacks. The garden survived and was rebuilt 10 years after the attack. It served as a summer resort for Empress Dowager which diverted a bunch of silver and put it into the reconstruction and enlargement of the Summer Palace. When I paid to go in, I was handed a map which informed me that it was actually bigger than Forbidden City! Seeing as I didn’t have a lot of time left in the day, I spent my remaining time seeing more of the important parts of the palace. I only really spent a couple of hours visiting it before heading back for sundown. There was some history, but nothing too significant. Because of the time crunch I felt rushed, so I didn’t have time to get any great photographs or enjoy the peaceful surroundings of the palace and garden.

As John dropped me off, I said my good bye’s and thanked him for his great services. As for the reset of the night I went out to grab some food and came back to pack for my early flight out the next morning!

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