Bonus Blog II - I saw Space from The Great Wall!!!!

Welcome To The Great Wall Of China!!!

Cecelia took this panoramic photo from the west side of the wall.

  If you don't know, The Great Wall of China was said to be the only man made object that could be seen from the moon, but this has been proven to be untrue, thus the play on words for this bonus blog.  This will complete the adventure we had in Beijing.  If you can believe it, we did all of this in two and a half days.  When you read this blog and you feel your heart start pounding and you get short of breath it is OK, because that is how we felt.  The incline of the stairs was steep and unfortunately the pollution was so bad that we had a hard time breathing.  What, you think we got tired from just the exertion of our activity?  Come on, we are finely tuned athletes that spent the previous day at the Olympic Village pretending to win gold medals.  Granted we visualized winning them in Golf, but Golfers are athletes too.  Besides we live near Yosemite and climbing the stairs was like going up and down the Mist Trail twice.  No Problem!!!!!!

Getting ready to climb

SCHOOL:  Once again no school because of Dragon Boat Festival.  By now you are probably wondering if we ever really work.  Of course we do, I had to even work on Father's Day.  Man, talk about a surreal experience.

ADVENTURE:  After the previous day of tromping around Beijing, we woke up and headed out to find The Great Wall of China.  As always the research and planning of an Oetinger adventure is not always executed in the manner in which it was supposed happen.  This trip was no different.  The beginning of our excursion went well.  We rode the metro to the stop that we were supposed to get off on and began searching for the bus we were supposed to catch.  This is where it began to get interesting.  I had read two separate internet articles that gave the same clear details about riding the metro, getting off at a certain stop and then looking for bus number 68.  So, when we arrived at the area in which we were supposed to get on bus 68, guess what?  You probably already guessed it, there was no bus 68.  The four of us then wandered up and down the street for about 15 minutes before I finally stopped into the police station on the corner.  The police looked dumbfounded and didn't have any idea about bus 68.  I then wandered back up the street a little more and spotted a bus with the number 58 on it.  Now, at this point you are probably saying to yourself that he is lost and had the wrong bus number.  My own children said the same thing to me at this point and I promptly pulled out my trusty iPad and showed them the article that gave me the directions.  In bright red numbers the number 68 blazed out to silence them.  Same for you critics out there.  Besides, I had already asked the police rather than be a stupid father and husband that just drives around in circles without asking for help.  So, at this point I went to the number 58 bus and asked them where bus 68 was located.  Through my broken communication in Chinese I found out that we needed to ride the number 58 bus to the stop to pick the number 68 bus up that would finally take us to The Great Wall. 

We're going up there?!!!

Cecelia then asked me if I was sure I knew where we going.  I answered in a confident manner and said yes, despite the underlying trepidation that I didn't just ask them to take us to a really big Chinese restaurant.  My fears were increased after about 45 minutes on the bus.  We pulled up on the side of the road out in the middle of the country, and the driver told everyone to get off.  Fortunately there was a nice young lady that spoke some English and she told us to just wait for bus 68.  It was going to be coming in about a half an hour.  The nice thing was that bus 68 came about 15 minutes into our wait.  When we hopped on I met a mother and son from San Francisco that were going to The Great Wall as well.  They spoke not only excellent English, but fluent Chinese as well.  The mom's family lives in Beijing and here son that was with her was a freshman this year at Berkeley.  We had a nice chat as we made our way to The Great Wall.  This was actually their first visit to Beijing as well.
  About 20 minutes into our ride the driver announced that we were approaching The Great Wall.  Just some quick facts about The Great Wall.  It was actually built and rebuilt a number of times.  It originally was begun in the 7th Century before Christ was born.  It grew over many years and finally was considered one wall in 220 BC.  The current wall was seriously refurbished during the Ming Dynasty and has been maintained periodically since then.  The actual wall length is 3,889 miles.  That would be roughly as long as two thirds of the United States.  The part of The Great Wall that we visited is called, Juyongguan "The North Pass".  This section of the wall was used to protect the capital city of Beijing.  I don't know why they needed a wall here, because as you can see in the pictures, the terrain is very steep.  If I was a Mongol and just marched up through the valley to the base of this section I would have just turned around and been happy with conquering most of China.  This portion had never been breached by any army.

Seriously Sarge, we're going to attack that???

  We chose this portion of the wall because it is the steepest and the least crowded.  After hiking the wall loop, I can understand why.  The loop that includes a village with The Great Wall is roughly 4500 meters long, which is about three miles. When you add in the one climb, which I already mentioned was like going up the granite steps, and two descents that are like going down the cables on Half Dome, it feels like 10 miles.
  Our hike began at the valley floor.  We then progressed up the West side to the highest point of The Great Wall.  The steps are very steep and it reminded us of hiking up the granite blocks to the base of Half Dome.  After arriving at the top, we headed down the loop that headed back toward the valley and East Side.  Like I said earlier most of this has been refurbished, but let me tell you the steps that they decided to redo must have been made based on the original specs to keep it authentic.  Most of them are very uneven in height and width.  Some sections going down are as steep as leaving the top of Half Dome by way of the cables.  There was more than once that my vertigo attempted to kick in.  I had to do my best Jimmy Stewart impression and fight it off.

It goes on for Miles and Miles

  One section of the wall has a dead end at the top of the East Ridge.  Looking out over the dead end there is a section of the original wall that has not been refurbished, it is really cool.

The highest watch tower in all of The Great Wall

At the finish.  Another Christmas Photo??

  I have mentioned before how I felt at some other monuments during this crazy adventure, but while at The Great Wall it was different.  It was hard to get a handle on what I was feeling.  It took the first hike to the highest watch tower to clarify what I was feeling.  I think my initial feeling was one of disbelief.  I stood there at the very top of highest watch tower thinking to myself, "Never in my wildest dreams as a kid or a young adult did I ever think I would ever do anything like this."  You know, I am a very goal oriented person and I believe that it is important to have goals to reach your dreams and to be successful, but I can honestly say that standing on The Great Wall was never on my list until I got to China.  The next thing I felt was grateful. I then closed my eyes and said a prayer of thanks.  I thanked God for giving me the opportunity to stand on one of the greatest man made objects ever produced in human history.  I then felt joy, because not only was I standing on the highest point of The Great Wall, but my family was with me as well.  How could it get much better than that?  Even the bad Beijing pollution couldn't ruin the experience for us.  Let's see now, that is two of the eight Modern Day Wonders of The World Down.  Where should we go next?  Claire says, "Brazil to see Christ The Redeemer and to watch her play on the 2016 Olympic Women's Golf Team."  I like her thinking, a daughter after her old man's heart.
  After buying many cheesy souvenirs, like hats and t-shirts, we headed back to Beijing by bus and metro.  Our trip back wasn't nearly as exciting.  We returned to the hotel, had dinner and then Cecelia and I promptly had massages together.  Come on, even fine tuned athletes get massages after competing!!!
  By the way, remember the missing number 68 bus.  Apparently they have stopped service from the metro station.  They had changed within the last month.  So, ha I wasn't lost.
   Now, we will be frantically packing up, going to good bye parties and taking care of the little things that need to be done before we head for Xian.
  Enjoy the rest of the story in pictures and have a great week!!!  The Great Wall of China - Juyongguan Section