True Greatness

(Bob:) At last we arrived at the Great Wall, and it turned out to be as advertised. We had feared it might just be above-average, but it was indeed great. It was one of those places that everyone should visit, and at the rate the Chinese are going on promoting tourism, that could soon be accomplished.

We arrived at the portion of the wall chosen by our great guide after a great bus ride and a great lunch. The weather on the day of our visit was surprisingly great. We had all worn layers of clothing after hearing tales that it is almost always cold and windy and often cloudy at the wall in the winter and spring. But it was sunny and clear and almost shirtsleeve weather.

Our portion of the wall, at Mutianyu, is about 85 kilometers from downtown Beijing, slightly farther than the portion 50 k from Beijing that receives the most tourists. That doesn’t mean we went to an “undiscovered” portion of the wall. Mongol hordes of shopkeepers lined the road we had to walk from our bus. They were intent on arming us for our wall assault with great postcards, great tee shirts, great walking sticks, and great bunion pads with the little words “I got this great bunion climbing the Great Wall.” But on the day of our visit, since it was winter, our group of 98 people (three busloads) made up most of the people on our wall section. Not so great for the shopkeepers.

At one point in Chinese history, the wall was 4,500 miles long. About a third of it remains, some in poor repair. Our portion had been restored courtesy of a German corporation from Dusseldorf, according to a plaque we saw. That company probably ended up building a bunch of high-rises in Beijing, but then I just may be a cynic.

I had a great idea which I suggested to our guide. Since this is the year of the tiger, the Chinese government could sell long portions of the wall to Kellogg, which could maintain it and put neon Tony the Tigers along the wall every quarter mile or so, with loudspeakers that blare out, “Yes folks, it’s really Grrrreeeaaatt!” I think we’re looking at potentially one of the world’s great advertising success stories here. And little guys wearing Tony suits could walk along the wall, offering to have pictures taken with tourists. The cross-merchandising possibilities are almost endless, especially with the movie Wall-e character.

Anyway, to get back to our visit, any of our blog readers who are military strategists will know that a great defensive wall, to be effective, has to be built along the summits of hills and mountains, not in the valleys, which makes getting to the wall a little difficult. So we faced the Great Climb just to reach the transport up to the Great Wall. Up we went for about a steep half mile through the hordes of hawkers. We made it with our wallet unscathed, although the cold beer stall was tempting. Then we took the cable car on about a 10-minute ride up to the base of the wall.

We climbed some steps and there we were on the wall. About a thousand photos later we had walked to a couple of the guard houses, which you can see in our photos. Then we began to realize that walking on the Great Wall usually involves either walking up or down some fairly steep slopes, which really wasn’t so great. So after 90 minutes or so we walked back to the cable car and went down to catch our bus before it left. Almost all of the students in our group walked to a point where they could ride wheeled toboggan sleds down to shopkeeper heaven. We decided in our case that suicide was not an option so we would ride the cable car down.

When we got to the bottom of the cable car we were ready for the hawkers. We ran down the mountain, shouting lines from “Pork Chop Hill” and pretending we had bayonets at the ready. Gregory Peck couldn’t have done it any better, although I was wishing I had a real hand grenade. That would have been great.