We had researched quite a bit about the Great Wall. We learned some interesting facts, or rather, mythbusters, you could say. Like, the Great Wall isn't actually a single, long wall running through China but rather a series of walls built at different times by different rulers in various areas to help protect their empires. Oh, and apparently you cannot see it from space, which I had always heard. But we also learned some useful information as well, or so we thought. We figured out which subway station/bus terminal we needed to go to, the bus route we needed to take, etc. We learned that there are a few areas of the wall you can visit near Beijing. The different sections vary from quite a lot of restoration, complete with handrails, to virtually no restoration at all. Some were closer to the city and some were pretty far out. There are tours you can take that range from a little more than half a day to overnight camping trips or even some at a section that has a hotel you can stay at! We've been doing our own thing in cities all over the world, so we decided why change that now? We had such a short amount of time in Beijing that we couldn't devote an entire day to the Wall. So we settled on something in the middle. Mutianyu Great Wall is located about 70 km northeast of Beijing. It's somewhat restored and frequented by tourists, but it's supposedly not as crowded as some of the other sections without being quite as far out of the city as others.
So as I said, we made it to the bus station that morning. Of course, in keeping with my Adams blood, we were running, ahem, a little late. And we got off the subway just a few minutes before the bus was supposed to leave. This bus only ran once an hour, so we ran through the subway station, transferred to the connecting line, and rushed into the bus terminal. We frantically searched the signs, looking for our bus number. We couldn't find it, so we tried the information booth. They pointed us outside, but we couldn't find it out there either. And to make things more complicated, as soon as we entered the terminal, people started approaching us, asking if we needed a ride to the Great Wall. One lady followed us for probably 15 minutes. I'm not really one to take a ride from strangers, and we had done our homework, so we told them all thanks, but no thanks. We quickly realized we weren't going to make the bus this hour but decided to at least find the particular stop we needed before heading anywhere else. We looked and looked, asked information again, asked a police officer, pretty much anyone who we thought might possibly speak English. We never did find it.
We finally gave up on the bus and tried a couple of cab drivers, but no one seemed to understand where we wanted to go. Or they wanted to charge us an astronomical amount. Then Blake remembered that during our research we had found another bus route that went to an international convention center, where you could take a minibus to the same section of the Great Wall as our original bus route. That bus proved much easier to find. Blake showed the name of the convention center bus stop (in Chinese, of course) to the bus driver, who nodded and motioned for us to pay. We boarded the bus and were on our way!
The hardest thing about buses is figuring out where to get off. Sometimes you can't see the signs quickly enough to know if a stop is yours or not. In some places, the buses don't stop at all the stops, only if there are people waiting at the bus stop or if someone on the bus signals the driver before the stop. Fortunately we had a seat at the very front of the bus, and Blake kept showing our stop to the driver to remind him which stop we wanted. After about 45 minutes, at which point we were completely out of the city, a man had come to stand at the front of the bus near our seats. He was wearing the same uniform as the driver and was having a conversation with him. He noticed Blake showing the name of the stop to the driver, and in somewhat decent English asked to see it. Blake showed him, and he said that he knew where that was and would tell us where to get off the bus.
Not much later, we came to another stop, and the man told us this was our stop. I was a little confused because I couldn't see anything that looked like a conference center, but he assured us that this was where we needed to be. So we got off the bus and started looking around. He then proceeded to tell us that there is no conference center anymore, but his car was parked right at this bus stop and he would be glad to drive us to the Mutianyu Great Wall himself. Oh man, was I angry! Angry at the websites that still list this bus route as a way to get to the Wall. Angry at the driver who let us get on the bus in the first place. And angry at this man for telling us to get off this bus in the middle of nowhere so he could charge us for a ride to the Wall. IF his intentions were as innocent as that! He kept saying, "You can trust me." And I kept telling him that I didn't know him so no, I couldn't! But I'm not sure he really understood me. Because while his English was infinitely better than my Chinese, which, let's face it, is completely nonexistent (I don't think "ni hao" really counts), it really wasn't very good.
Blake called our hotel and asked them for some translation help. The hotel talked to the man for a couple minutes and then explained that the convention center is no longer in use and the bus stop we were looking for has not been used for 3 or 4 years. They said that the man was offering to drive us but that they suggested a taxi. They said a taxi from that area should run about 120 CNY. However, we were on a little street in a little bitty town located somewhere north of Beijing. We were standing by a bus stop with a route that we knew nothing about except that it was supposed to take us to a minibus to the Great Wall, which obviously it didn't. We didn't know how long it would be until another bus came, and we had no idea if the bus would take us back into the city or even further out. And this whole time we'd been standing on the street trying to communicate with the man, who told us his name was Peter, and talking to the hotel, we hadn't seen a single cab. Knowing how difficult (and by difficult, I mean impossible) it was to catch a cab at a major tourist attraction actually in Beijing, where the hotel assured us it should be very easy, we didn't find that scenario likely. So it seemed we didn't have much more of a choice than to hope Peter was honest.
Peter said he would take us to Mutianyu Great Wall for 70 CNY, and I kept thinking that if we could just get to the Wall, we could find the bus stop there and take it back to the city. So finally we agreed to go with Peter. Often when we go to Buddhist temples and other religious sites, I find myself praying for the people there. It's sad to me to see people who so obviously want to find the right way but are practicing a religion without the true hope of Christ. But I have to selfishly admit that rarely have I prayed as hard as I did in the back seat of Peter's car. I was truly afraid that we had made some terrible mistake and our story was going to turn into some horror film about American tourists in China being sold into white slavery or something worse. I think Blake probably lost the feeling in his right hand, I was gripping it so hard as we made our way through little towns and open spaces on back roads through the China countryside. I think it was probably a beautiful little drive, but I was too nervous to notice.
After about 30 minutes or so, we started passing signs that said Mutianyu on them, and Peter seemed to be following them. But when we finally arrived, unharmed and unsold, at the Great Wall, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and prayed another prayer of thanks. And I think Blake even got the feeling back in his fingers after a few minutes. Peter then told us he would wait on us to go up to the Wall and walk around the area and then drive us back to the bus stop for barely more than double his original fee. We had seen the prices of tours to the Wall, and with the cheap bus fares, this guy was more than a deal. And at least now we knew he was honest. So we agreed on a time to meet and headed up to the Wall itself.
You could climb up the mountain to the Wall, but we opted to take the more scenic (and admittedly lazier) way up with the chair lift. It offered some really beautiful views of the surrounding mountain range and the Wall. And then we arrived at the top. And it really was amazing to be there and see it. One of the new Seven Wonders of the World. It was just awesome!
While we didn't walk the entire section of Mutianyu, there appeared to be steps on all of the ascents and descents. However, some portions of the steps were extremely steep and many were well worn. And regardless of the difficulty, you were going to do a lot of walking. So someone PLEASE explain to me why anyone would wear these shoes to walk the Great Wall of China? Seriously? I'm just saying.
For the trip down the mountain from the Wall, we took the slide. Yes, that's right, I said slide. You rode these little carts where you could speed up or slow down just by pushing or pulling on a handle between your legs. And it was so much fun!
When we got down from the Wall, we spent some time browsing stands that I think were run by people from a nearby village. They had all kinds of souvenirs, and our new buddy Peter told us fair prices for some of the most common items. Blake found an "I climbed the Great Wall" t-shirt, and we got a few other small mementos. There was a Subway (sandwiches) at the end of a row of the stands and a little coffee shop that also had a few Chinese dishes. We ordered one sub and some sweet and sour chicken, which really turned out to be more like orange chicken. It wasn't as good as our favorite Chinese take-out place near our old house in Baton Rouge, but it was pretty good. We even used the chopsticks!
But he really was a nice guy, and when the express bus showed up full, he tried taking us to another bus station where we might be able to get seats on an express bus. That bus station had a really long line, so he took us to yet another bus station. He probably spent another 15 - 20 minutes of his time taking us to a station that was closer to the city in its route so that we wouldn't have to stand for as long on the way back. And he didn't charge us anymore money. I would highly recommend finding someone like Peter ahead of time if you ever plan to go to Beijing to see the Great Wall.
Because of our great adventure getting out to the Great Wall, it was much later than we had hoped it would be by the time we made it back to Beijing. We realized we'd never make it into the Forbidden City before it closed for the day. But we went by there anyway just to see what we could and to see Tiananmen Square.
From Tiananmen Square we headed to Wangfujing Street, a famous shopping street in Beijing. But we were really looking for Wangfujing Church, a Catholic church which was built in the 1600's, rebuilt in 1904, and restored in 1980. After walking for forever (or what felt like forever after climbing the Great Wall, standing on the hour-long bus ride back, and walking around Tiananmen), we were about to give up. Because after all, it's not like we could trust any of our directions anymore after the Great Wall debacle. But we decided to try one more apparent clearing between the taller, more modern buildings that seemed to dominate the street, and a good thing too because there it was. It was a beautiful church and reminded me of all the cathedrals we saw in Europe, which I'm sure was the designer's intent in 1904.
On our way back up the street, we went into a lively market on a side street. It was packed with people, souvenirs, and interesting food choices, like random things on sticks and wriggling octopus tentacles in bowls. Yeah, look closely at the sticks. Unfortunately, as awesome as our camera is, it does not take moving pictures like those in Harry Potter's Daily Prophet. So you can't see that those scorpions are still alive, moving and squirming on their sticks. Ewww. Not that I would consider eating a still one either, but really? At least the seahorses appeared to be dead.
We had one more stop on our list that night - Temple of Heaven. We had purposefully held this one until last because it stays open until 10pm and we thought the buildings would be really beautiful lit up at night. So around 7 or so we made our way to the subway stop we had noted from our internet research. Ha. When we got off the subway, of course there was no indication which direction we should go. So we picked left. We walked a while and then came upon what looked like a temple gate. A closed temple gate. There was a sign on the front in Chinese only. We couldn't believe we had missed it! At this point, my feet were aching horribly, and I was past frustrated. But the more I looked at that gate and the small wall connected to it, the more I thought it really didn't look like a big enough area to house all of the Temple of Heaven complex, which is supposed to comprise upwards of two and a half square kilometers. So we pulled the map back out and looked at it, and lo and behold, this wasn't even the stinking Temple of Heaven! The information we'd gotten was wrong again! We searched the maps we had with us and discovered that we'd only been a few subway stops away when we were back at Wangfujing Street.
There was really nothing else to do but go back in the direction we'd come from to the correct subway stop. We got off at the stop this time with (you guessed it) no idea which way to go. We looked left and right but really couldn't see anything to give us a clue. The west gate was supposed to be just off the subway stop, but the street was mostly deserted. There were no other tourists to lead the way. It looked like almost nothing to the right, so we went left again. We walked. And we walked. And we walked. The wall was curved, so you couldn't tell what was coming. We kept thinking at any second, we'd round the curve and find the gate. We were so tired and frustrated but determined not to miss something else. We finally arrived at an opening only to find the gates still open but all the lights off. There were locals just inside the grounds, dancing and clapping to music. We consulted our map again and determined that we must have walked all the way to the north gate and chose what looked like the shortest path that would lead us back to the west gate (and the subway stop). It was pretty spooky wandering through the grounds with hardly any light. All of the buildings were closed, and we really couldn't see much. I was disappointed to miss so much of such an interesting site, but it was hard to be concerned with much more than my aching feet. So sorry for the awful pictures. We really tried. The night sky was pretty beautiful over the ancient buildings, though, once you got past the spooky part.
So, in conclusion of our Beijing trip, let me just say that you most definitely cannot believe everything you read on the Internet! Although, truthfully, of all the cities across the world that we've been to, Beijing is the only one where we've had this many (or really even this kind of) problems. And at the end of the day, seeing the Great Wall was so amazing, it was worth it.
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