Part 3 of our June 2009 trip to China with the Speizmans.
Wednesday, June 10 – Great Wall, Ming Tombs
The next day was no less ambitious as we piled into a hired car with Henry for a journey to the Great Wall. On previous trips, I had been to the Badaling segment of the wall (in February 1982, May 1982 and November 1988). This day, we headed to a relatively newly renovated section, Mutianyu which had been opened to tourists in 1988.
It was about a 90-minute drive north from the hotel to Mutianyu. The roads were good and the traffic not too bad as we headed out of town against rush hour traffic. I was surprised as we got to the outskirts of Beijing to see several golf course and suburban housing developments that would have looked at home in Phoenix or Los Angeles. We went too fast to take good photos but there was clearly an appetite and allowance for Western suburban sprawl, at least in pockets. I note this as a not necessarily positive thing but something that was absolutely not seen or allowed two decades earlier.
We arrived at the Mutianyu parking area and found ourselves in a small base camp for tourists, uninhabited other than a gauntlet of souvenir stands and places to get cold drinks just opening up business for the day. We were pleased to see a couple of healthy and happy looking cats also getting ready for the day.
This little base camp was actually the lower terminus of a cable car that ran up to the actual wall. Rather than drive up to the wall itself, as at Badaling, this Mutianyu section kept the bus and vehicular traffic further from the wall itself. It’s probably a wise choice but one of the highlights of driving to Badaling is seeing the Great Wall snake up and down impossibly steep ridge lines for some miles as you approach. Here at Mutianyu you don’t really see the wall at all from the road. I wasn’t expecting a cable car ride to get there but at least the cars were enclosed and seemed reasonably safe. And fortunately we were there before any substantial crowd.
This ride is not for drunkard and people who are insane.
Our first obligatory photos with the Wall. We were pleased to be among the first on the wall this day. We were also pleased to have a clear blue sky, something unusual for Beijing but I guess a little more common in the countryside. The surrounding countryside was much greener than at Badaling.
The hills were greener than I expected.
Time to start walking. We set out first to the left or toward the west and the steeper portion of the wall.
We pushed onward toward the steepest part of the wall. Henry and I decided to wait at the foot of the steep hill while the others made the climb to the top. It gave me the chance to chronicle their ascents and descents.
more power to them. Henry and I wait here.
We assume Faith and Sydney are there too.
The view from the top, courtesy of Allie’s camera.
And now the descent…
After a small pause, and possibly a snack of Barb’s surreptitiously obtained sandwiches from the hotel breakfast buffet, we headed back in the other direction.
When we felt we’d had enough hiking along the Great Wall we had a couple of options to get back down to the parking area. Rather than take the cable car we were surprised to see there was a metal-track toboggan option, something we didn’t expect in China. The girls were all for it and the adults opted for it as well. Henry was not as enthusiastic but clearly had done it before. The ride down was a fun finish to our day on the Wall.
My notes indicate we also intended to visit the Ming Tombs which had been a requisite companion stop on the way to Badaling each time I’d gone before. However, the Tombs were about an hour out of the way from Mutianyu and I have no photos from them so I don’t think we went. On the other hand, I have a vague memory of stopping at the tombs and being unimpressed with the crowded tourist trap they had become. I have no photos to verify that memory so for the time being it will remain a mystery.
We drove back into Beijing and stopped briefly on an overpass near the Olympic Park which we had sped through on the first day from the airport. This time we were able to get out and take some photos, even if we didn’t actually go into the park or see the buildings up close. It was a barely sufficient fix for my desire to get a few shots of these new Beijing landmarks.
site of swimming and diving events
In the evening, after showers and a little rest, we got taxis to a Peking Duck dinner. Rick and I chose the place which turned out to be an upscale, modern restaurant in a new office park (I don’t have its name at the moment). The restaurant would not have been out of place in any major city in the U.S. or Asia. The whole meal was excellent but lacked the local character of the older Peking Duck institutions I’d visited on previous trips.
When I first came to Beijing, there were only a couple of Peking Duck restaurants open to foreigners. One was nicknamed “Big Duck” and another was “Sick Duck” (because it was near a hospital). Sick Duck turns out to have been a branch of the venerable Quanjude restaurant family. These older restaurants were packed with Chinese and foreigners, and there was a buzz of activity and excitement even if the foreigners were cordoned off in their own areas. This newer restaurant had none of that buzz and I missed it; I don’t think Rick was greatly impressed either.
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