Today we traveled a few hours out of the city to see the Great Wall! We were supposed to go to the Badaling section, but due to traffic ended up at the Mutianyu section instead. It was quite a climb up to the Great Wall itself from the vendors, and a few people decided to take the cable car up instead. Personally, I could never do that – how could I say I climbed the Great Wall if I didn’t even get up there by myself? Dr. Gao did terrify them us little bit – he said we were about 1% up the climb to the wall when we were actually about 25%.
When we finally got up to the wall itself, the views were magnificent. The mountains were beautiful, and the entire area looked so much more archaic than Beijing, which is ridiculously modern. The Wall was a lot quieter than all of the tourist attractions we’ve visited previously, though there were still a fair amount of hikers, and the tourists there were far more international. We also got a lot more time to look at the architecture and the views, whereas in Forbidden City and the Summer Palace we spent a lot of our time walking, not observing. I liked looking at the watchtowers – they were a lot cooler inside, and the archways and the windows were really interesting.
When I was looking at the landscape and further-off sections of the wall, I noticed one section that had a giant set of stairs without a break. Naturally, I felt as if my trip to the Great Wall would not be complete without climbing an even more ridiculous amount of stairs, so I stared wistfully at the stairs for a while, saw that Ryan also had a vague desire to climb them, and together we convinced Dr. Gao and Krysta to let us keep walking. We had half an hour, and somehow we managed to get over to the stairs (which were several watchtowers away), climb up them, take pictures at the top, and go back while only being three minutes late. It was a fairly difficult hike, especially with the time crunch, but it definitely completed my Great Wall trip, and I would have regretted it forever if I didn’t climb it.
After taking the cable car down and strolling through the massive amounts of vendors all selling the same thing, we took the bus to an outdoor restaurant not too far from the Wall. I believe it was Skylar who said “This is the most disturbing meal we’ve had so far” – we got to see the fish we were eating caught and beaten to death at a pond close to our table, and we had a dish that had all parts of the chicken, including the head. As usual, it was a delicious meal, and it was entertaining to see the swimming fish (and a few group members try to catch them) and the dogs that were on the premise. As we drove back towards the city, I watched some houses being built, and Jay said he saw solar panels from Tsinghua Solar – it was interesting seeing modern technology being brought to the countryside.