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Moonrise over the Great Wall

Posted on December 02, 2011 By Julie

Frequent guest blogger Mandy Zhang Feuerbacher shares her camping experience on the Great Wall

The one thing that my friend Tina really wanted to do when she visited us in Beijing was to camp on the Great Wall.  “Can we even do that?”  I asked her.  Well, it turns out that you can, and it can be an amazing experience, particularly if you’re lucky enough to have beautiful pollution-free weather, which is hard to come by in Beijing.  My birthday weekend just happened to land on one of the most beautiful weekends we’ve seen in our 4 months in Beijing.

We chose to visit the Jinshanling portion of the Great Wall about two hours north of Beijing, which, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful sections of the wall.  It was built during the Ming Dynasty, starting in 1570 CE.  Most of the Jinshanling wall is preserved in its natural state, while Badaling and Mutianyu (two sections of the wall which attract the most tourists) were both heavily restored to have that flawless Great Wall “look” like you see in movies and postcards.  While Jinshanling may not look as perfect as the other two sections, it is the most authentic, and also has the least tourists.  On some days, you can walk along the wall for miles without seeing another person.

On our first day, we leisurely hiked on the wall for over 4 hours.  Our Chinese guide, who was guaranteed to be an English-speaker, spoke English so poorly that for the most part, we could not understand his diligent and carefully rehearsed statements about the history of the Great Wall.  We gave him the occasional polite nod, but mostly, we were just preoccupied with the majestic views of the wall.  The sky was such an intense blue, and little fluffy white clouds floated here and there.  Tina even bought me birthday cake, which I ate while sitting on the wall.  What a great way to enjoy birthday cake!

While we stayed on the wall most of the time, we had to take a detour to get around a section that bordered a training facility for the People’s Liberation Army.  For that, we weaved through cornfields and dense green brush.  Upon every turn and every staircase that we climbed, we wanted to stop and take pictures in an attempt to capture how perfect the Great Wall was on that day.

After we finished our hike and the sun started to set, we had a delicious meal at a small Chinese restaurant about half a mile away from the foot of the Jinshanling Great Wall.  It was the only restaurant around for miles.  They specialized in family-style home cooking, and soon, we were all full, satisfied, and tired.  By then, it was starting to get dark, so we put on our headlamps and followed our guide up a very steep “shortcut” to the Great Wall with all of our camping gear.  It had gotten fairly cold by then, and before leaving the restaurant, I was smart enough to ask our waitress to fill up my water canteen with boiling water.  I kept the canteen in my jacket and it kept me warm for hours. 

Even as we were setting up camp on the Great Wall, I could not believe the surrealness of the situation.  I am living in Beijing, and camping on the Great Wall, I kept telling myself, but it was still hard to believe.  We got out of our tents to watch the moon rise.  There were stars everywhere.  The moon was completely full two nights before, so it was still fairly round, and so bright that it reflected off portions of the wall.  As it slowly moved across the dark night sky, our guide told me in Chinese, “I have never seen such a bright moon rise while camping on the Great Wall.  Since it happened on your birthday, you will have a very good year.”  Despite the cold, I slept really well that night.  (It helps that I usually prefer to sleep on firm rock-like mattresses).

We got up at 5:30 a.m. to watch the sunrise, which was just so serene and peaceful.  For once, it was silent, which is a hard thing to find in a busy place like Beijing.  We had breakfast, and continued our second day with another beautiful hike.

We all came home from that camping trip enchanted, energized, and happy.  It was definitely one of the most incredible experiences of my life, not to mention an amazing birthday.

 

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