The Great…staircase?

After our pollution-fraught wander around the 798 Art District on Saturday, we escaped to the mountains on Sunday. The three of us crammed into a hired car with a paid guide and schlepped to the Huanghuacheng section of the Great Wall!

It was pretty luxurious to have a guide, I have to say. We were essentially paying for someone to speak mandarin and translate for us…oh, and know where stuff is that isn’t in the guidebook. It’s relaxing to not have to bust out the phrasebook every 5 minutes to figure out what’s going on; or to carefully construct sentences so co-workers with limited English skills can understand or translate. (I hate being a burden on my co-workers, but man, my mandarin sucks. So far, I think they think of me as entertainment, and not annoying. For now.)

Hiking the wall is basically like doing a stairs workout; lots and lots of up, some down, more up, a little slippery down, more and more up, some sketchy crumbly down, rest to take photos, then repeat in reverse on the way back. Only it’s GORGEOUS, so you don’t notice the pain or sweat (much). 

I find the “up” easier than the “down” (ryan is the reverse); up is all about heart and lungs, and while it’s a challenge, my heart&lungs are all “oohhh yeah, hurts so good, I hate it, gimme more.” The down is kinda killer on my knees (“why do you hate me? why are you doing this to me?”), and Ben’s ankles were unhappy at best. Oh well, first up and last down means more time for photos! 

The best part of the hike was definitely seeing the wild Wall. The government made some concerted reconstruction efforts starting around 1947 to rebuild the Wall in places, specifically for (internal) tourism; but the vast majority of the Wall is untouched. We hiked to a spot along the Wall that transitions from rebuilt to wild, and the wild section was just stunning. For more commentary and lots of photos on the hike itself, peruse the larger set of my Huanghuacheng hike photos. If you want to learn more about the Wild Wall as a concept and preservationist movement, check out William Lindsey’s site.

After the Great Wall hike, we had a delicious lunch of local foods, and then a half-hour car ride through the countryside to the Yinshan Pagoda Forest outside the village of Haizi (called Silver Mountain because of the way the waterfalls make the high-up rock surfaces look like they are covered in ice during the summer, and coated with silver in the winter). We learned about the history of the pagodas, local legends, and popular classic Chinese movies (Monkey King!) as we hiked to the top of the Middle Mountain (and back down again). I really loved the prayer tree and the stunning view from the top.

It was so lovely to get away from the city for a day, and it was especially fun to go to uncrowded places where essentially only Chinese tourists go. Hiring a guide is kind-of expensive, so we won’t be doing it all the time, but we definitely intend to get outta town again in upcoming weekends and take in some more rural beauty!

my favorite photo of the day: